

THE IMMORTALS

PART ONE: SHADOWS & STARSTONE

Cheryl S. Mackey

Copyright © 2019 Cheryl S. Mackey

License Notes: This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

DEDICATION AND AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This book is dedicated to my husband and my sons. Without them, I could never have dreamed so big and accomplished so much. I am eternally grateful for their love, support, and understanding.

Inspiration for the main characters goes to my friends, Jessica, Neal, and my husband, David. Without them, there would be no adventures in Ein-Aral. Thank you so much my dear friends!

Special thanks to Wlop, owner of the cover image, who gave me special written license to use his magnificent artwork as the cover of this novella. Please check out his amazing work here: http://wlop.deviantart.com/. Huge thanks as well to my cover artist Victoria for the awe-inspiring lettering and detail work to make the cover perfect! Her work can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/whitandware.

This is a novella and is intended as a prequel to another set of works currently in progress. The first book of that trilogy, THE UNKNOWN SUN, is available now. As a prequel, THE IMMORTALS contains events and characters relevant to THE UNKNOWN SUN. However, this novella is quite readily standalone and can be enjoyed as it is. Please note that the events in this book and the rest of the upcoming prequels occur long before the events in THE UNKNOWN SUN.

Prologue

1st Dawn of the year 1099, Eastern Mountains, Ein-Aral

Four figures stood atop the mountain and watched with farseeing eyes and heavy hearts. All across Ein-Aral newly created Immortals were awakening, their mortal lives plucked from their broken bodies like ticks from skin. Confusion, fear, despair, and hope all flooded into one giant swell of emotion.

The gods swayed beneath the onslaught, their breaths catching, pulses pounding in their ears like the beat of a war drum. Without these Immortals there was no hope to defeat the intangible, unstoppable, enemy they had unknowingly released into an innocent world.

"It is done then," the first said. "Our soldiers have arisen, awakened with powers and an ever- renewing life. Most will remember little of their past, but forgiveness will be slow."

"Immortal souls do not make for true immortality, First," the second said. "Their bodies will fall, rise, and fall again, until their souls will no longer fit into their skin. A new body will be taken, a new Immortal made from a mortal life lost, but with a soul ever older and a new face in the mirror. We had no choice."

The others nodded, remaining mute in the fading sunlight. The suns, sinking to the south, dragged their shadows the length and breadth of their newly self-proclaimed realm. Guilt and grief wrecked their visages.

"Wait," the third said. The light flared and died behind the mountains and the darkness of the first night of many fell. "Wait, I wish to join them. Who are we to proclaim ourselves above fighting for our own people? Why should they fight and defend, and we do not? This evil is our doing. These people had no voice in this."

"She speaks truth," the fourth whispered. Her voice cracked and faded into the wind whipping over the bare stone cliffs. "They deserve no less from us for giving them this bitter fate."

"So speaks us all," the first agreed. "Among them we must go, and as them we must be, mere Immortals, until we are needed as gods once more at the end of all things."

Four bodies fell to the earth, their souls severed from skin. Their screams merged with many thousands of others as the curse spread across the whole of Ein-Aral.
Chapter One

2nd Dawn of the year 2099, Eastern Burning Desert, Ein-Aral

They didn't see her. Emaranthe settled lower in the saddle and leaned into the horse's gait. The sounds of the bustling village hid the deliberate clatter of hooves on stone, but it was loud within the shadows of the hood tugged low over her face.

She flicked the reins, the slight motion twitching the hem of the frayed dark blue cloak, and let the horse continue to meander, unnoticed, until they reached the communal fire pit. She studied the flow of daily life in watchful silence and waited. Sure enough, one by one they began to notice the stranger in their midst.

It always began as a whispered torrent of confusion. Today would be no different so Emaranthe continued to watch until the confusion became alarm. When the alarm became mutters of anger and defensiveness, she moved.

Emaranthe slid down from the horse in a blur of motion and moved to the fire, gloved palms stretched toward the warmth. The less brave villagers hustled away, and all around the village flimsy wood doors clattered shut. A few souls remained, determined to get answers from their uninvited guest. Hidden in the shadows of her hood, Emaranthe smiled and closed her eyes as the flickering flames leaned toward her hands.

An older woman approached and Emaranthe's eyebrows arched in amusement when the footsteps halted several feet away still.

"Why she's but a little girl!" the woman cried out. She moved closer and Emaranthe opened her eyes, following the woman's movement. She didn't try to hide the grimace, but she knew that it wouldn't be seen.

"Little lady? Do you need help?"

"No."

Their collective gasp would have been comical if the situation hadn't been so dire. Emaranthe bit back a sigh and pulled the hood down, baring her pale braids to the midday sunlight. She felt their eyes take her in, study her odd coloring and petite frame. This area of Ein-Aral was populated by Earthlanders and this village was no different. Her hands fell to her side, fisted with the effort to endure the attention she'd asked for.

"It is you who need my help," Emaranthe said to the self-appointed spokeswoman for the village now. Her words punctured the stunned silence so that it erupted into a chaos of cries and protests. "What is your name?"

"I'm Aggie...but what do you mean?"

"Aggie, evil is coming. I am charged with protecting your village," Emaranthe said.

"What evil? Who are you?" Aggie hushed the clamoring crowd with her bold words.

"I am called Emaranthe."

She turned to face the crowd and waited for a moment. Their energy felt more nervous than dangerous, for now. It would have to do until her companions could join her tonight.

"I mean no harm," Emaranthe said, louder. "And I will explain why I am here in due time."

She turned back to the fire again, tugging the thin hood back up and once again returning to the shadows and away from the dozens of piercing gazes.

"Protect us? How can you protect us? You are but a child!" an even older woman ducked around Aggie and brandished a small stick. Emaranthe turned to face her and sighed. She stood shorter than the elderly woman, her petite stature always giving the illusion of her age.

She was anything but young...even when she was The Youngest Immortal. Ever. Immortality was no gift, however.

"A child? I haven't been a child for over three hundred years," Emaranthe said, catching and holding the old woman's gaze. "What is your name, Elder?"

"Igoras."

"Hah, you can't be more than ten summers!" a man's voice huffed from the throng, but he did not dare to show himself.

"Eighteen. I was eighteen summers, Igoras," Emaranthe corrected. She watched the woman's dark eyes widen as her words sank in and then turned to study the sunlight streaking the steep plateau cliffs to the south in reds and oranges. Heatwaves swirled off every surface. "I think," she added. "I'm afraid I no longer remember that lifetime."

"Immortal. She's an Immortal," Igoras licked cracked lips. The whispers began again and spread like fire. Beside her, Aggie's face took on a look of stark fear.

Igoras dropped to her knees and bowed until her forehead touched dirt, her gnarled fingers clutching at the hapless stick. Streamers of silver hair dragged loose and tangled in the hot desert breeze.

"Please, forgive us, Immortal. We meant no disrespect," Aggie cried out. She took the cue from the elder and bowed, and the rest of the flock fell to their knees behind her.

The silence grew agonizingly long.

"Please, don't be afraid. Rise," Emaranthe said. Her lips flattened. "I am here to help, sent by The Unknown Sun to protect you. There has been word of a possible uprising of the enemy and your secret is now known."

Emaranthe reached over her shoulder and slid free a wood staff with a charred and splintered crook at the end. She held it away from her, over the bonfire, and the flames flickered, twisted, and swirled over and up it. Neither the staff nor her clothing ignited.

"How can one so young be an Immortal?" Aggie asked. The mesmerizing flames danced along the staff, casting shadows where none had been before. "I thought The Four forbade it, that only warriors of age were called. Yet I see a Child of Fire standing before my very eyes."

Emaranthe caught and held Aggie's gaze for a long moment. Her mouth quirked into a bittersweet smile, and her thin shoulders hunched deeper into the threadbare cloak. The smile faded when the villagers continued to stare in awe and fear while remaining kneeling.

"Please, tell us, Immortal," Igoras pleaded. She unfolded her withered body and Emaranthe held her gaze once more. "I have never heard of one called to The Unknown City so young before."

Emaranthe leaned on the staff for support, head bowed. Tendrils of flame still wove up the twisted wood and along her arms and fingers. They caressed, instead of burned, a familiar warmth that helped ward off the ache in her heart that twisted at the elderly woman's words. A story, so be it, if that's what it took to gain their understanding until her companions arrived.

"All I remember is bits and pieces. Fragments of a life long gone. I remember that it was cold and growing dark. The easterly winds were bringing a wild spring storm. I remember seeing the clouds gather over the mountains and hiding the suns, but I could not leave my flock," Emaranthe said. She swallowed, stomach rolling at the memory. "I built a small fire beneath a large ledge and hoped to escape the worst of the storm."

The villagers leaned forward in rapt attention. Emaranthe closed her eyes.

"My goats and sheep huddled near and I was confident we could weather it," she continued after a pained pause. "But something else was moving with the storm; I could feel it in the wind—a warmth, a fire, a hunger. Rage. Destruction. Chaos."

More than one villager gasped.

"I stayed put, my crook in hand as my only defense, and watched as the thing moved with the storm ever closer. Lightning tore the sky and rain fell before it. I held a vain hope it would pass me by and leave me in peace." Emaranthe opened her eyes and exhaled. The tightening of her chest sharpened into a twist of fear. She shoved it aside and resumed, her gaze now roving the kneeling crowd as her voice strengthened.

"It came wreathed in fire and an ancient sorcery I had no hope of defeating. Fire and lightning were its form and weapons of war. I held it off for a short while, brandishing my crook as pitiful weapon," her voice faltered. "The creature tore my crook from my bloodied fingers and tossed it into the fire. I dragged it from the flames in desperation."

The fear became terror and the knot of power that was her immortal soul twitched. Emaranthe let it, let the surge of fire turn her brown eyes into molten gold. Tendrils of flame circled her irises in an otherworldly dance. The crowd hushed, mesmerized.

"Burning, smoking, I wielded the staff, crying to The Four— for a savior, anyone— but none came and I was at my end."

Emaranthe lifted the smoldering staff and returned it to its place at her back where it vanished into shadows to hide until she needed it again. Her fiery gaze trained on Igoras. Tears streamed down the elder's wizened face, tracking through her wrinkled flesh like paths of a river.

"I don't know why, but it fled and my broken, burned, body was left in the cold rain...alone. I could only wait to die. I felt the darkness calling me within the thunder and rain," Emaranthe's words were nearly lost over the crackle of the fire behind her. "The next thing I remember is waking up in a strange place, wearing a stranger's face. Nameless and with no memories... but not alone. I was found."

"By who?"

"That is another story for another time." Emaranthe's smile tightened. She peered into the stretching shadows as the sun sank behind them, seeing something only her fiery gaze could decipher. "Good. They approach."

The throng of villagers stood and stumbled about, looking for an unseen foe.

"Hold, friends. I do not mean evil approaches," Emaranthe said. She moved toward the large horse that stood unconcernedly nipping at a patch of weeds at the edge of the firelight. "My companions approach from the west. We are here to help your village keep its secret."

She led the horse from the bonfire and to a weedy field behind the shacks. She climbed into the saddle and turned to study the crowd that followed behind her.

"Igoras, I will return with my companions and we will save you and your people. The enemy will not win here."

Emaranthe wheeled the horse away and the old woman's voice rode the hot wind at her back.

"Thank The Four. Oh, thank The Four."

***

"Why bother with keeping to the darkness, Emaranthe? You're cold."

Emaranthe flung her hood back to peer up into Ivo's familiar green eyes. They studied her for a long moment, the lines at the corners crinkling endearingly with worry at the shivers she hadn't been able to hide in time. He'd taken off his helm and the play of the light on the lines of his unshaven jaw and strong nose twisted something deep within her chest. The feeling was...not new, but an old one left unsaid. By both. She broke eye contact first, her throat suddenly tight, and rubbed her gloves together to keep her fingers warm.

"We need to remain undetected, Ivo, for as long as possible. We tip our hand now and the village will fall. They have no idea what stalks them, no defenses. I'm fine."

He grunted and moved his horse closer until her small knee touched his leg. She jerked, startled by the warmth hidden behind the layers of armor and the worried gaze still on her.

Two more figures appeared the liquid-like light of the portal, their horse's ears flicking in time with her racing heart. At their silent glances, she turned to lead them down the narrow trail. The village was a couple of hours away by horseback.

"How did it go?" Ivo asked. The darkness now hid the planes of his face. She sensed the tension in his body and frowned.

"It was fine. They managed to keep calm. Why do you ask?"

Jadeth's horse pranced between them, forcing Emaranthe's horse to dance aside with a nervous huff and pinned ears. Ivo's horse simply wandered further away without a care in the world, but his rider kept his gaze on Emaranthe, his posture stiff.

"What did they say?" he asked finally.

Emaranthe exhaled. "Not much. I told them my story."

Red braids flailed as Jadeth leaned low over her horse's neck to peer into Emaranthe's face, blocking her view of Ivo. A look of disquiet had turned her normally bubbly elf friend worried.

"What story, Emaranthe?" Jadeth asked, eyebrows knit.

"Nothing, Jadeth. It was just a story."

Lips pinched, Jadeth sat up, worry darkening her blue eyes.

"Ema, that's not nothing. Are you okay?"

Emaranthe tugged the folds of her cloak tighter around her body and shivered. The desert air felt cooler than before despite winter being weeks out. The suns were long gone round to the other side of Ein-Aral, and the moon with them at this time of year.

"I'm fine, Jadeth."

"Leave her alone, you two. We can't afford distractions here." Jaeger snapped from somewhere to Emaranthe's left, but she couldn't see him in the dark. The steady rap of hooves on stone helped pinpoint his location. They had spread out, four wide, out of habit.

"What do you think threatens the village, Emaranthe?" Ivo's voice speared the night after the long silence.

She exhaled as she shivered, thinking for a moment. "I didn't sense or see anything living other than the usual animals and villagers. No Tainted for now. The mines are high up on the plateau and I don't know if they're reachable any other way than on foot."

Ivo grunted. "The Dro-Aconi will send the undead. Rodon noted that they had appeared more often in the desert than the forests during raids or attacks."

"The Tainted will stick to the forests or mountains," Jadeth added, her voice flat. Emaranthe glanced at her, worry sending a trickle of unease up her spine at the elf's thin voice. The darkness hid her friend's face, but she reached out a hand and gripped Jadeth's firmly. Long, slim, fingers squeezed back.

"Did Rodon happen to guess who would be leading this attack?" Jaeger grumbled. His usually curt voice had minutely softened and Emaranthe smiled over her shoulder at his general location in the darkness.

"No," Ivo said. "Not this time. He was too busy directing the other guardians to their missions."

"Hmm."

Chapter Two

The bonfire erupted, showering embers and sending flames dancing on a gust of wind. The barely awake guards scrambled to attention, raising wooden spears at Ivo. Beside him, the Emaranthe raised her eyebrows in silent question, her gloved hands outstretched to the fire again. She was always cold.

Ivo shook his head at her, but couldn't hide the small smile. He ignored the guards and their ineffective weapons and studied the quiet village. It was peaceful, prosperous, and he hoped and prayed to The Four that they could keep it that way.

Jadeth leaned past his shoulder, red braids bouncing as she studied the befuddled guards.

"I think they have never seen an Elf before. Maybe I've scared them?"

A muffled snort of laughter from the male to her left sent a sharp jab with an elbow his way.

"Shut it, Jaeger!" she sniffed.

Ivo rolled his eyes and ignored them too.

"No, they are not scared, Jadeth," Emaranthe said. She smiled teasingly at her friend. "But I think you've enamored them."

"What are we looking at, Ivo?" Jaeger asked quietly, all mirth gone from his face. Ivo glanced at his brother, and then at the terrified guards, not surprised to see them skitter back several paces when Jaeger loomed closer.

He was huge. Plate armor, dull and battered from use, covered him from head to toe. Shrewd blue eyes watched every flicking shadow as the women led the horses to the desert field behind the huts.

"I don't know yet. We will need to wait for sunrise to find them." Ivo sighed. He pulled off his helm and ruffled his shoulder-length black hair. The sweat-dampened strands dried when he sent a small gust of warm wind around their small party.

"I don't like it here," Jaeger muttered. He ran a gloved hand over his dirty blond hair until it stuck up in sweaty spikes that also immediately dried in the wind. He glared at Ivo and jammed the helm back on and turned to tend to his own stallion. "These people have no idea how much trouble is coming."

"That is what we are here for, Jaeger. Our mission is to protect them and their secret," Ivo said. He studied the desert landscape. The sheer red valley walls climbed to soaring peaks and jumbles of stone formations. Narrow trails wove up the cliffs; leading to the reason they were here to protect the tiny village. "And right now, we don't know what's coming either."

***

"People of Stone Hold," Emaranthe's firm voice cut through the clamor like an arrow. All froze and stared. "As you have most likely guessed, we are not here by chance. My companions are Immortals like myself. This is Ivo, son of Veriuc of Saro-Shir to the east, and master of the wind and sky."

Ivo shot her an unreadable look at their awed stares. She smiled back, her brown eyes squinting in the morning sunlight.

"At his side is Jaeger, son of..."

"I am just the master of the seas and rivers," Jaeger interrupted with a warning glare at her and then the villagers. "I wield it but for defense."

Emaranthe sighed. "Also of Saro-Shir."

Jadeth bounced on her toes. "I'm Jadeth of the Eideili in the central woods. I am a healer of sorts." She waved a giant double-headed hammer like it was a toy. A grin brightened her jewel-like blue eyes.

The first few rows of people edged back, wild-eyed. The elder, Igoras, approached. Their grim and puzzled looks made swallowing difficult for Emaranthe.

"What has happened, Emaranthe?" Igoras asked. "We've lived in peace for so long, and now you say we are in trouble?"

Emaranthe met their gazes. "The Unknow-"

"Not just any trouble," Jaeger interrupted. He dropped the satchel he had been carrying. It hit the dusty ground with a clatter and the leather flap opened, spilling red-tinged rocks. "I believe you know where these came from?"

Igoras stared at the pile of fist-sized rocks and sighed. Emaranthe clamped her lips tight and backed away from Jaeger with a wary glance at Ivo, before putting him between her and the stones.

"Yes," Igoras replied. "We've been mining it for years without problem until whispers of the Dro-Aconi came last year. The rumor is that the demon searches for power to wield over mortals. Now we hide our mines and pray. Why are you here only now? What changed?" She bent stiffly and picked one up.

Emaranthe could see that it was oddly heavy for its size. The red tinge was barely noticeable, hidden under dirt and dust. Ivo's hand brushed her arm, a silent show of support for what she needed to do. She glanced up at him and caught his ever-present worried frown.

"It's okay, Ivo, we need to show them," she said. She moved past him to stand beside the worn bag of rocks again and waited until Jaeger backed away with a silent glance at his brother. They drew their weapons. Behind them, Jadeth closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as she hefted a great two-handed hammer and swung it high. The hammer emitted an odd, iridescent, green glow.

"What is happening?" Aggie shouldered her way through the crowd and stopped at the sight.

"We must be careful with the Starstone. We can't be caught off guard." Jaeger sank into a ready crouch in front of the Elf, his ax held ready. "The demons will be watching and this may be the only way of flushing them out."

"What is she doing?" Aggie asked. She seemed to fight the urge to back away. Emaranthe's dark hood flicked around and her odd gaze pinned Aggie.

"She is going to save your life," she said. Her words cut through the muttering villagers.

Without warning, she jerked the staff from the shadows behind her and swung it high over the pile of rocks. Ghostly flames spiraled up the length of the staff and erupted from the charred crook. Brown eyes turned molten. The ethereal radiance of both backed the villagers up several steps, their shocked cries echoing off the cliffs.

The rocks began to glow red, faint at first, then hotter and darker, until they were brighter than even the bonfire. Everyone but the immortals shielded their eyes in fear.

Emaranthe studied the cowering crowd.

"Behold the power of the Starstone. The rock of The Four, the first stones said to be cast upon our world by the gods and used to create the first portals. If the enemy were to seize this they would be able to travel beyond our borders and be unstoppable. We know they seek it to recreate the ways of the gods to our own destruction."

"Your village holds the last of the known Starstone in all of Ein-Aral and it is up to us to convince the Dro-Aconi to let you keep it," Emaranthe added. "And your lives."

***

The swirl of fire edging Emaranthe's irises faded. Pain etched lines into the corners of eyes that had seen hundreds of years of a war that had no end, pain that Ivo hated to see there every single time they worked to defend innocents from an unyielding enemy.

It was all that the Immortals, the legions of warriors created to stop the enemy, could do to keep the tide of evil from gaining ground with each passing decade. The enemy, the Dro-Aconi, was an unseen foe that had infiltrated and stolen the minds and wills of many, and then leveraged them as a brutal force to reckon with. The Fallen. The Tainted. Demons. Zombies. Wraiths... In over a thousand years since the creation of their kind no headway had been made. It was as if the enemy knew everything one step ahead of them. The army forged by their gods was failing... and the enemy knew it.

Ivo ignored the villagers and tugged off his helm. His gaze lingered on Emaranthe, and then scanned the shadows clinging to the red cliff walls beyond the desert valley. The suns were at their midmorning arc and should have dragged shadows away from that end of the valley. He jerked his chin at the unnaturally darkened cliffs, to the west, and felt Jaeger tense beside him.

Emaranthe let her arms fall and the flames vanished. Her small frame sagged with weariness as she put away her staff. She dragged the ragged hood from her head and turned to face the villagers once more. Strands of hair freed from her braids caught the stiff desert breeze and tangled across her mouth.

"The Starstones only react to raw energy, but once charged by coming into contact with it, they provide a power source unimaginable," Emaranthe said, her voice quietly serious. There was no need to shout, everyone in the village was deathly silent. "The enemy needs the Starstones to create more portals."

"Now the Dro-Aconi's demons have found where to get it," Jadeth added. She slipped past the men and glared into the crowd, her huge hammer draped over her shoulder as if it were a toy. "And they won't stop until your mines are pillaged, your homes are burned, and your empty bodies are theirs to command. And then they will move to the next village, the next race of people, and never stop once they get it."

"What do we do?" Igoras fell to her knees with a sob. Her stringy gray hair trailed in the breeze, her gaze fixed on the tiny girl with the haunted eyes that burned behind her wind-tossed braids.

Those eyes burned beneath a thick fan of black eyelashes like a flame; hard, pained, and angry. Ivo's breath punched out, his heart twisting when tears dampened the corners of her eyelashes.

"We fight. We fight until we have won," she whispered. "No matter how long it takes."

"Fight? How? We have nothing," Aggie said. She moved to Igoras and held her shoulders. Her terrified gaze darted between the imposing men, the lithe Elf, and the tiny Mage. Igoras let Aggie help her to her feet and the two women huddled together and waited. Behind them, the crowd of villagers murmured cries of fear.

"You have us," Ivo muttered. He forced his gaze back to the villagers and slipped his sword in the sheath at his side. It vanished. From the piles of their belongings, he pulled out a shield just as battered and ancient as the rest of his armor. He slung it over his shoulder and it also vanished with a sharp gust of cold wind that seemed to disintegrate the heavy metal until nothingness remained in the shadows behind him. "And time is of the essence now."

"Madame, what lies on those cliffs?" Jaeger asked, his breath frosting the sun-warmed air as he spoke. His ax vanished with a crystalline crack as he moved to stand beside Ivo.

"Why, you are brothers!" Aggie gasped. Two pairs of eyes pinned Aggie like arrows. Lethal arrows.

"Yes." Ivo jammed his helm back on. He looked at his brother, saw the pain reflected in his cool blue eyes. "The Dro-Aconi cares nothing for life. We were brothers in life, and now we are brothers in eternity."

Jaeger said nothing, agony tightening his features into a mask.

"Aggie, are your mines to the west?" Emaranthe asked. She moved between the women and Jaeger, breaking the spell. Jaeger blinked and moved away, unable to speak. Ivo cast her a grateful glance.

"Well, there is an abandoned mining town at the base. There used to be mines up there too, but no one's worked them in years because of the demon threat," Igoras replied.

Crack.

Ivo watched the villagers duck at the sharp rumble of thunder. He looked up at the sky as a second peal of thunder echoed off the narrow ravine walls. The sky above them was blue, but to the west pitch-black thunderheads rolled and billowed over the cliffs, darkening the sky into an unnatural inky purple. The fair breeze turned stiff and cold as the wind changed direction.

"The demons of the Dro-Aconi have arrived as predicted by The Unknown City." Jaeger jammed his helmet on. His eyes glinted like chips of ice within the depths of the eye slits as they roved over the cringing villagers. "You are discovered."

"I wonder which demons have been sent this time," Ivo muttered. "Too long have we chased shadows but not the enemy. Too often do we drive back a demon only for it to return."

Emaranthe's lips twisted into a small, sad, smile as the villagers stepped back, silent and afraid. Ivo knew that her sadness stemmed from their fear of the Immortals just as much as their unknown enemy, and he hated that he couldn't do anything about it.

"The best we can hope for is to keep the demons and battle away from the village and stop them from taking the stones. Stay here, stay on guard," Emaranthe said.

"We will return," Ivo added, with one last pointed look at Aggie and Igoras. Jadeth appeared leading the horses. They mounted in silence and vanished into the spreading darkness.

***

The rumble of thunder shook the ravine walls. Brief cracks of lightning lit up the purple clouds from deep within, casting terrible shadows across spires of rocks that dotted the valley.

"There are no signs of demon movement on the valley floor, Emaranthe." Ivo glanced to his left at the small, hooded figure with pale braids. She didn't glance up. "What do you suppose they are waiting for up there?"

"Us," she rasped. "They know we're here."

Ivo frowned. Only Jadeth continued to ride, humming lightly as if the world wasn't trying to end all around them.

They halted the stallions at the path at the bottom of the cliffs. Cut in a narrow ribbon into the ravine wall, the trail was a long ride up dozens up tight switchbacks. The sky cast purple shadows over them, making visibility poor at best.

"We should walk. They are at the head of the trail about halfway up where it widens out. No generals, only your standard undead so far. Skeletons, I think," Jadeth said.

Ivo squinted but couldn't see what she was talking about. He dismounted and waited for the other three to follow.

"Let's go," Emaranthe said. She pulled her staff from the shadows hiding it from the view of mortals. God forged, their weapons were just as tangible as Immortals were, but bound to their souls... not their physical bodies. They were usually the weapons or objects the mortal had with them when they perished and were reincarnated, and sometimes weren't quite so useful. Unlucky Immortals with less powerful gifts and weapons in The Unknown Sun were often relegated to support or secondary roles, like Guardians.

Ivo watched the flames spiral along Emaranthe's staff before licking hungrily at her hand. Her gloved fingers twitched as they tightened around the charred wood, and his heart twisted with the motion. He shook the feeling off and freed his shield and sword with a growl. He slammed them together. The sound cracked and echoed like a war cry off the cliffs. A deceptively deadly whisper of wind teased the air between them, his gift.

Jaeger smiled, his gaze cold and remote as he copied Ivo. His ax swung in a deadly arc as it smashed against his shield, and dust stirred on Ivo's vigilant current of air, staining the sky red. The dust settled with an absent command from Ivo that turned the wind away.

Jadeth hovered behind the others, her war hammer shouldered and glowing an iridescent green. She traded eye rolls with Emaranthe.

"We're ready," she sighed. Ears twitching in the sharp wind, she led them up the narrow path.

They moved as one unit, without having to strategize or plan, which lifted Ivo's spirits. The formation was as natural as breathing, and after decades of companionship, it was to be expected. The rocky trail raced up the cliff, steep and twisting, but they covered the miles at a steady run, weapons and shields ready.

They neared the top and halted. Jadeth made her way to the rim and dropped into a crouch to survey this end of the plateau.

"Twenty skeletons. They are milling about, on guard. No generals," she whispered down to the others. Mindless creations like zombie skeletons usually had a puppeteer. That meant there were more somewhere else. "The mines appear to be more to the north and further up from here."

"Twenty? Let's get this over with," Jaeger sneered. His fingers gripped the ax until the leather of his gauntlet creaked under the strain.

Ivo grimaced as he cast his gaze about his small circle of best friends, "Ready?"

He looked to Emaranthe last. Her lips twisted into a small, crooked, smile. She closed her eyes.

Flames erupted from her staff, engulfing it in a layer of heat. The flames slithered and curled, twisting and crackling up her outstretched arm to spread over her shoulders, head, and body. The unnatural gloom around them cringed away from the ghostly shield of fire.

Her eyes snapped open. Heat rolled off her in waves.

"Ready," her voice echoed, magnified from within the shield of crackling flames.

Ivo spun and leaped the edge onto the plateau in a blur of motion. Jaeger followed on his heels. Emaranthe glided over the edge, staff aloft, fire burning furiously. Jadeth leaped after them and swung her hammer in a huge circular arc over her head. The weapon flared an eerie green aura that touched on the heels of the group as they moved to confront the shambling skeletons.

Ivo let out a roar and a wind howled to encircle them and the enemy. Corralled, the undead jerked in reaction and turned eyeless skulls toward him. Their gaping jaws unhinged as they screamed back in fury. Shredded strips of clothing clung to the filthy, moldering, bone as they surged forward in a horrible mass of death.

The tide of skeletons reached Ivo and Jaeger first. They swung their weapons in deadly arcs, connecting with decay and bone so hard that skulls shattered and bone exploded. Grunting with fury, Ivo shouted at the skeletons again to draw their attention. Using the distraction, Jaeger swung his ax high with both hands and decapitated several with a snarl. Bits of grimy bone rained all around. The stench of decay rode the wind encircling them.

Heat burned behind them with little warning.

"Down!" Ivo grunted. They ducked just in time to escape a tide of fire that swept mere inches over their heads. Heatwaves rolled the air, distorting Ivo's view as the flames surged from Emaranthe's uplifted staff. It engulfed the advancing line of skeletons, sending flaming bone and rags clattering.

"A little close there you know," Jaeger snapped over his shoulder. He hacked at the nearest skeleton. A decrepit arm sailed aside to land at Jadeth's feet. She didn't take notice but swayed her hammer. The green glow pulsed every so often and her gaze remained focused on the battle and keeping her friends healed.

"Emaranthe, finish it. We can't linger here." Ivo spun to avoid a skeletal hand holding a dagger. Who had armed the undead? He caught her gaze and held it. Flames swirled around her irises, highlighting her pale face within the darkness of the hood pulled lower over her face. She nodded and moved to intercept the remaining skeletons.

Emaranthe heaved her staff into the sky. The air warped and bent. A shockwave buckled the ground beneath their feet and a rumble filled the air. Flaming rocks rained down from the clouds trailing smoke and heatwaves. The comets slammed into the remaining skeletons, pounding them into the ground in a gut-punching series of booms that shook the earth and sent them all stumbling.

Ivo stilled, waited. Sweat stung his eyes as he scanned the landscape, avoiding Emaranthe's gaze. No more skeletons staggered from the shadows of the plateau, but he knew that being complacent was like to being dead. Again.

Emaranthe sighed and goosebumps skittered up Ivo's spine. His gaze found hers again before taking in Jadeth and Jaeger's weary stances. The flaming debris subsided into nothingness. Ivo sent a sharp gust of wind to push aside the smoke. That battle wasn't subtle. The enemy would most likely reinforce their ranks now.

Chapter Three

"Too bad it isn't that easy." Emaranthe shot a look at the churning sky and surveyed the plateau surrounding them. Towering rock formations dotted the landscape and a narrow dirt trail continued to the north and upwards, toward the mines near the top. The smell of dust, smoke, and death was pungent.

She stabbed the end of her staff into the rocky dirt and leaned on it for a long moment, her head bowed and blonde braids trailing almost to the ground. A dry breeze, hot and fitful, dragged one over her face. She ignored it but stared down at the gruesome chunks of bone and filth at her feet. So much death.

"We need to keep going." Ivo gripped her arm, startling her upright. She blinked up at him. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Ivo. Let's go," Emaranthe said. She stared up the narrow path, uneasiness cramping her stomach. A peal of thunder shook the ground and her teeth rattled.

Lightning forked the sky. Above them, purple clouds shrouded the plateau in a gloomy haze, stirred by a cold wind not of Ivo's making. Unnatural magic could disturb the balance of nature, and it appeared the eerie gloom had melded with a summer thunderstorm. It burst open, sending a torrent of icy wind and sharp drops of rain that stabbed the skin.

"We must find shelter. That is only going to get worse. Hurry," Emaranthe said. She jerked her hood close against the damp wind. Ducking into the howling wind, they moved up the narrow path. The inky clouds now stretched over the entire valley, leaving only a distant patch of red-gold sunlight to filter through to the far western rim of the ravine. The shafts of orange light from the setting suns mixed with acrid purple. The waning daylight made the unnatural storm even more sinister as they made their way up the steep path.

"Emaranthe's right. We're going to have to find shelter soon. It's no use to fight in this," Ivo grunted and shot the roiling clouds a glare that made Emaranthe's heart skip. Drops of rain pelted his upturned face. Another burst of lightning torched the roiling sky. Thunder clapped, the vibrations rattling everything.

"Here, try this way," Jaeger called out over the trailing rumbles. He stopped as they rounded a bend and pointed out a faint trail leading into a narrow gorge dug deeper into the multi-leveled plateau. He led them through the narrow ravine.

"I don't like this," Ivo said. He frowned at the steep walls funneling them deeper into some sort of recess. Emaranthe followed, her staff held loosely in her left hand, her gaze searching the shadows at the base of the cliffs. Like Ivo, she didn't like it one bit.

The narrow ravine ended at a curved sheer wall and they stood in silent contemplation of their options. Though the wind still howled, it didn't quite reach so deep into the blind canyon.

"We must stay here. There is little choice with the suns setting, a storm, and enemies afoot." Emaranthe slid the hood off her head and sighed as she scanned the oval-shaped dead end.

Jadeth shrugged. "It could be worse; we could be in the open."

Ivo grunted. None of them had anything with them, so setting up camp was as easy as sinking to the ground. He leaned against the crumbling sandstone wall and closed his eyes, feeling an exhaustion he hadn't felt in a long time. Behind his eyelids, a small, flickering glow lit up the dark. He couldn't help but look.

Emaranthe cupped her hand beneath a tiny, hovering flame and held it aloft like a lamp. It shivered and twisted in the sharp wind, but burned steady, casting a dancing golden puddle of light on them.

"Why haven't we seen more of the skeletons?" Jadeth asked no one in particular and for a long moment no one answered. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the cliff wall. "Not that I'm complaining, though."

"They are waiting for the right moment," Emaranthe whispered. She stared at the tiny fire-lamp in her gloved hand. "They know we are here."

"Mining ore doesn't need an entire invasion. Those skeletons were puppets and half that number could have taken out the village and secured the ore," Jaeger said. He opened his eyes and frowned up at the pitch-black sky. Darkness had fallen fast and hard. The rumble of thunder grew softer, more distant. "There must be something other than ore harvesting going on."

"What else is here?" Jadeth asked. She sighed and dragged a scarlet braid over her left shoulder. She chewed on the tail of the braid, her long ears flattened back as she thought.

"Not much. These villagers lead a simple life. The ore was all they had and even then they never truly knew its value," Emaranthe said.

"What else then?" Jaeger asked. He scanned the slot canyon sheltering them for anything that could explain the enemy presence. "We don't even know what or who is controlling them."

Ivo grunted and dragged a gauntleted hand over his face. The cold metal and leather felt rough against his tanned skin.

"The only other thing out here is the passage to the south." He jabbed a thumb in the general direction of the valley floor that ran north to south, nearly the length of the continent. "And there is little else than sand, rock, and thieves out there."

"How did the Dro-Aconi find out about the Starstone?" Emaranthe asked. She lowered her hand and let the fire writhe out of her gloved palm until it hovered above the bare stone floor. She sat back against the rough sandstone wall and pulled her knees to her chest, her cloak and robes bunching about her legs. Propping her narrow chin on her knees, pale braids dragging into the dirt, she watched the floating flame with wide, enigmatic eyes. No fire swirled within, turning them a soft brown.

Ivo studied her in the light cast from her small fire, noting that she looked more like a young woman than ever. He knew better, however, knew that the decades of battles, deaths, and reincarnations had hardened her, perhaps more so than even he, Jadeth, or Jaeger. Something about nearly dying, repeatedly, made one grow up awfully fast. The fact that she was the youngest Immortal ever was also a puzzle, one their Earthlander leader, Rodon, was keen on solving. Perhaps even more so than seeing their elite group drive back the enemy and search for their lost gods.

"Spies," Jaeger offered, his voice muffled by the arm draped over his face to block the faint drizzle of rain. "We have spies, why shouldn't the enemy?"

Ivo grimaced as a rivulet of water slid between the cracks in his armor to soak his undershirt. "You have a point, brother, but why now?"

Jadeth dropped her hair and her ears shot up. Emaranthe sat up too, her head tilted as she listened to the howling wind.

"Listen!" she gasped.

"Incoming!" Jadeth cried out.

They bolted to their feet just as a loud wail echoed through the narrow gorge, an unearthly screech seemingly magnified by the narrow sandstone cliffs.

Jadeth's hammer sang as she swung it high over her head. A green glow cast an eerie light. "Skeletons. I hear their bones scraping."

Jaeger growled, "That is far more than twenty...and they sound armored."

The rhythmic rattle of bony feet and clattering armor punctuated the breathless wails.

Ivo slid his shield and sword free. He crouched, shifting agilely on the balls of his feet. Fury darkened his face as he assessed their situation. The oval-shaped clearing was large, perhaps 100 meters wide and half as long from their position near the back.

"We have little room to fight here. We're trapped," he muttered.

***

Emaranthe pulled her staff free and moved to stand beside Jadeth, Ivo, and Jaeger. The tiny fire hovering at her feet guttered as the wind strengthened. Thunder rumbled. The howling and clattering of bones grew louder, sending goosebumps racing up her spine.

She closed her eyes and let the heat rise within her. She let it curl, thrash, and slither from somewhere deep in her soul. Flames erupted and swirled at her feet in a macabre dance. They hovered and circled in an endless writhing motion at knee height.

Blazing eyes slammed open as the first wave of undead appeared.

Zombies, really little more than skeletons with still-attached, half-decayed flesh and marginally higher intelligence, shambled disjointedly behind the first few rows wearing an amusing mismatch of scavenged armor. More than one decayed body part had simply rotted off and fallen beneath their feet to be stepped on or over.

With a roar, Ivo launched through the air on a gust of wind, sword swinging. He cleared the thirty-foot distance to the front line of minions and landed amidst them with an earth-shaking crash that cratered the rocky ground. Rock and dirt shook from the cliffs above. Skeletons and zombies crunched, scattered, and screamed with the force of the attack.

Jaeger reached the front lines at nearly the same time. His great ax, finely honed with a layer of ice, swung wide and bits of bone scattered and rained all around.

Growling in fury, Ivo spun about, his sword flashing and gleaming in the green glow of Jadeth's hammer. The skeletons fell quickly, but the zombies posed a greater difficulty as dismembered limbs had the disturbing ability to continue to fight.

Emaranthe watched the battle from beside Jadeth. She flicked small fireballs to pick off any daring to get close to her friend, though she wasn't overly worried. That hammer was made for more than healing as she had learned long ago.

She noticed a mini horde of forearms and hands scratching and clawing across the ground, intent on circling and attacking the men from behind. She plucked a larger ball of fire from the miasma dancing about her legs and hurled it at them. It hit dead on, exploding and scattering rotted flesh and bone, and setting nearby zombies afire. A group of skeletons detached from the main mass and turned toward the women, disjointed jaws wide in ear-splitting screeches.

Jadeth swung the hammer over her head and the green light intensified, bathing the gorge in a sickening green glow and tossing their shadows along the red stone walls.

"Heal them, Jadeth, I've got these." Emaranthe saw her friend hesitate and hurried to reassure her.

She raised her staff and a stream of fire, like a living vine, lashed out in a fiery arc. It swept aside the first few in a blast of heat and flame. Charred bone pelted the sandstone walls. And Ivo.

Ivo unleashed a violent gust of wind. It blasted aside another mob approaching from the narrow gorge, pinning the writhing body parts to the sandstone cliffs before they dropped, motionless, in a heap of filthy rags and bone.

A third group appeared in the chaos and charged Emaranthe and Jadeth.

"Get away from them!" Jaeger's cry drowned out the noise of the approaching mob. He turned to meet them, his ax rose above the moldering heads and sheared through most of them with a single blow. "Why. Don't. You. Die!"

Without warning he staggered and fell, his roar of pain almost drowned out by an ill-timed crack of thunder.

"No!" Jadeth leaped forward and swung the hammer in a blaze of green. The crawling mass of zombies, skeletons, and dismembered hands swarming over Jaeger's prone body shrieked and flinched beneath the weight of the green aura, but didn't stop.

"Ivo! Help!" Emaranthe rushed toward the horrible sight, heart slamming against her ribs.

She didn't dare launch fire at them without risking him. Although he could be reincarnated, each time an Immortal's body died, a piece of their soul was irreparably wounded. If the physical body died he would be lost to them, most likely forever. If his soul ever came back it would be wearing a different body and bearing a different name. If he or she was lucky they'd remember their prior lives. If anything, the race of Immortals feared death more than the mortals did. For them, death was not the end, only the continuance of an unwanted existence forced on them by gods who had forsaken them

Ivo turned and took in the scene with a single horrified look.

"No!" he spun, leaping into flight across the gorge, shield and blade slashing. He landed at the edge of the mass, and swept his shield across the nearest few, sending them flying. Another bone-crunching swipe unburied the lower half of his brother's body. Jaeger's legs arched and kicked, seeking to fight his way free. Blood streamed from jagged gashes around the gaps of his armor.

Jadeth dodged and kicked at scrabbling skeletons. In a frantic effort to heal him, her hammer glowed brighter as she worked, and in the eerie green glow of her hammer, the flow of blood slowed and then began to reverse and slide back up into his numerous wounds.

Hands glowing white-hot, Emaranthe struggled to shove aside the writhing mass of decay to reach him. Each time she touched a body part it burst into flame and exploded into ash. She flung half a dozen charred body parts away before she reached his mangled body.

"No. Come on Jaeger," Emaranthe gasped. She shoved a dismembered hand away with a grimace and struggled to drag his unmoving body from the writhing pile. Arms trembling, and legs buckling, she managed to move him away from the horde of rabid body parts while they were distracted by Ivo. Her legs gave and she sat heavily, his solid body pinning her legs, his head propped on her lap. She pulled his helmet off and cast it aside.

Jadeth dodged a zombie's outstretched arm and hovered her hammer directly over him. Emaranthe's hands sent the zombie stumbling away with a screech. Then another, her motions hampered by Jaeger's listless form. The rivulets of blood were moving to repair the multitude of tiny gouges in his ashen skin, but too slowly.

Ivo's sword sang as he swung in violent desperation. More and more skeletons shuffled closer, decrepit hands and moldy fingers grasping and clawing in a writhing, sickening mass all around until they circled Jaeger, Emaranthe, and Jadeth on all sides.

"Ivo, hurry! Come here!" Emaranthe screamed over the screeching horde. Ivo spared her a frantic look and saw his brother draped over her lap, his armor slick with blood. Jadeth's hammer glowed, but the gruesome wounds hardly moved to repair as long as she also had to help fend off the enemy.

"We have to get them off! I can't heal him like this." Jadeth slammed the broad head of the hammer down onto a crawling arm. It splattered, smearing dark goo.

"I can hold them off for a little while," Emaranthe gasped. "Keep trying!"

A rotting finger tugged at her long hair. She jerked free with a strangled cry that triggered something deep within.

Fire burned. Her eyes, wild with fear, flared into molten gold and blazed in the green-tinged darkness.

***

Ivo threw himself toward Emaranthe just in time. A wave of heat burst free, warping the air. A dome of fire radiated outward from her trembling body and enveloped them, encasing them in a shield of licking, seething, flame. Ivo ducked, tugging Jadeth down beside him and Jaeger, and shot Emaranthe an apprehensive look.

Heart racing, he reached for her but stopped short. He had no idea if touching her would be bad, but the drawn fear and panic on her ashen face told him that she was barely holding it together. Heatwaves rolled off her, distorting the air within their bubble of safety.

"Emaranthe, can you hold it long enough for Jadeth to heal him?" he asked. She turned white-hot eyes toward him, but he wasn't sure just what she was seeing. Worry at the pain tightening her face sent his stomach rolling.

"I don't know," Emaranthe whispered. Her entire body vibrated with barely controlled energy. Heatwaves pulsed and swirled along the expanse of the dome, scorching anything outside that touched it.

"Jadeth, how much longer?" he asked. His gaze flicked between Emaranthe and his brother. One was bleeding and the other was burning herself out. Fear turned his mouth dry and he worked to swallow.

Jadeth glared at him and continued to concentrate. Sweat poured from her temples to her scarlet braids. Her long ears flicked with the effort it took to control the massive healing weapon. The green glow intensified, battling with the bright firelight. The whole night lit up for a split second and the green aura washed over the gold.

"He's almost healed," Jadeth barked. "One more minute!"

"Hurry!" Emaranthe's voice trembled. "I can't control it much longer!"

Alarmed, Ivo reached for her, but she shrugged away.

Emaranthe gasped, her face stark with fear in the battling auras. "No. Will. Burn. I. Won't. Hurt. You."

Jadeth's arm fell to her side and the green aura faded. "Done!"

At Jadeth's words, her gaze flared the darkness. Panting with the effort and energy needed to channel such raw power, Emaranthe clung to Jaeger's armor as if to tether herself to the physical world.

Ivo swore and strong arms encircled the blazing mage. He pressed her fragile body as close as his cursed armor would allow and bent to peer into her eyes. His heart twisted at the sight of tears boiling away at the corners of her long, dark, eyelashes. He ignored the hordes of bony hands that continued to attack the fiery shield and burst into flame before crumbling into ash. He ignored Jadeth fussing over his still unconscious brother. He ignored it all just to hold on to Emaranthe.

"I can't control it, Ivo. My soul burns." Emaranthe whimpered. "I can't hold it back anymore. Jadeth. Save them. Please."

Jadeth swore proficiently and hefted the hammer. The green glow filled the fiery dome.

"Emaranthe!" Ivo tightened his hold around her thin frame.

Fiery eyes slammed shut. Her body convulsed in Ivo's arms. He held her tighter.

The dome exploded. Scorching flames riding heat wave blasted everyone backward. The night sky swapped places with the ground. The healing green aura blinded the eyes. Fire enveloped the darkness.

And then... nothingness.
Chapter Four

The stench of charred flesh seared Ivo's nostrils. He blinked up at the darkness. For a long moment he didn't move. Grimacing, he shifted his legs, arms, and torso to test for injuries. His entire body ached, but seemed to be in one piece.

He removed his helm with a grimace of pain and dropped it to his left. It clattered loudly in the oddly silent black of night. A gust of wind raked his long dark hair over his wind stung skin. How much time had passed?

"Jaeger?" he called out for his brother. He turned and reached out, but felt nothing. He clambered to his feet and dragged a hand through his dark hair as fear settled low in his stomach. "Jadeth? Emaranthe?"

"Ivo," Jadeth's voice echoed off the ravine walls and Ivo spun around, tilting his head to better locate her voice.

"Are you okay?" he yelled in her general direction. A grunt of pain just to his left startled him. He recognized that usually-snide sound and moved toward it. His boot collided with something softer.

Jaeger's familiar voice hissed with pain, "So you're trying to kill me too?"

Ivo ignored the comment and dropped to one knee at his brother's side, "Brother, you're alive. Thank The Four."

He gripped Jaeger's arm and heaved him upright. Though unable to see much in the darkness, Ivo was certain he was being glared at.

"What the hell happened?" Jaeger grunted. He tugged off his left gauntlet. Even without seeing his hand he knew it was cut up and bruised. He ignored it. "I remember trying to get the skeletons away from Jadeth. Wait, where are they? Are they okay?"

"I don't know. I thought I heard Jadeth, but she sounded far away. I haven't found Emaranthe." Ivo squinted into the darkness but saw nothing. The uneasy feeling sharpened until it twisted like a knife between the ribs and a numbing fear washed like a river of cold down his spine. The explosion...

"Jadeth! Emaranthe!" Jaeger bellowed into the night. Somewhere distant they both heard Jadeth's voice in the wind. "Where in the hell—"

A neon green glow lit up the night sky.

Squinting, both men stared at the source in mute alarm. High above them, Jadeth crouched on the ledge, holding her hammer high.

"How in the..." Jaeger frowned up at the Elf leaning over the cliff face. Jadeth stared down at them, white-faced, scarlet braids undone, but other than that she seemed uninjured.

"I can't get down." her voice drifted to them in the sharp wind.

Ivo didn't hear her; he was staring at the unmoving bundle of fabric at the base of the cliff directly below her.

"Damn." Jaeger dragged his other gauntlet free. It hit the ground with a clatter that barely registered in Ivo's mind. "I'll get Jadeth, you get her."

Jaeger cupped his hands and yelled up to Jadeth, "I'm coming up. Hold on!"

Ivo stumbled to Emaranthe, his knees suddenly uncoordinated. She wasn't moving and that sent a stab of fear deep into his chest. It twisted, like a knife, when he reached for her limp hand first. It was bare, the glove having been charred into ash. Horrible scorch marks outlined the petite body sprawled against the cliff face as if she were a doll flung aside and then dropped from the sky by cruel gods.

"Ema? Ema, open your eyes." Ivo brushed aside the tattered hood, heart-pounding dread making his large, calloused hands shake. Gentle fingers settled on her throat in search of life.

He couldn't look at her face. He wasn't brave enough to see the deep shadows beneath the fan of her eyelashes and think of the soft brown eyes that may never open again. A tangled blonde braid draped across her chest moved as she breathed and the faint thrum of a pulse beneath her delicately curved jawline made Ivo lightheaded with relief.

"Thank the gods." Ivo closed his eyes, his forehead pressed against Emaranthe's. He sat up and eased her sleight body into his arms, inspecting her for any obvious injuries and found nothing grievous. Her cloak was intact, but singed, which wasn't unusual for a pyromancer, he supposed. One pale braid had lost a ribbon to the fire, letting the long, pale, waves loose in the stiff breeze that buffeted the small box canyon.

Footsteps pounded out of the green-tinged darkness. Ivo looked up and locked eyes with Jaeger and Jadeth. Horror tightened their faces. Their panicked words became a mindless clamor as they moved to help.

He sifted battle-scarred fingers through a charred streamer of hair, the detached feeling of relief mixing with terror settling as their words sharpened in his mind.

"No. No..." Jadeth's pained mutterings were accented by the green glow of her hammer. The warmth of the healing aura penetrated to Ivo at last, and his mind focused once more.

"She lives. Just. She's out cold, her energy spent. We can't stay here but she needs rest," Ivo muttered, half aware of both Jaeger and Jadeth trying to inspect Emaranthe for further injury. He climbed to his feet, clutching her to his chest. As he walked from beneath the cliff, the wind stung his face. It was the wind, he told himself, that made his eyes tear up. "We need better shelter and this location is lost to us. The enemy knows our position and will no doubt regroup. Come."

Singed blonde streamers drifted in the screaming wind and a small, hand swung freely as he walked past Jaeger and Jadeth into the black night.

Jaeger retrieved their fallen gear and followed, trailing behind in grim silence. Jadeth's green aura healed as it lit the way.

***

The gentle motion stopped, but the armor-clad arms seemed reluctant to release her. Emaranthe didn't want them to. The explosion had been an unfortunate event, one that had sapped her of energy. The aura of Jadeth's hammer could only heal physical wounds, not wounds of the soul. She needed sunlight and time...neither of which she had.

"Emaranthe?" Ivo's voice punctured the breathless silence surrounding them. His grip on her shifted and she felt the rocky ground beneath her layers of clothing. Broad, bloodied, fingers swept aside the hair and cloak hiding her from the world.

Pained green eyes, framed by crow's feet, searched her for hidden injuries. It was the ones not in plain sight that hurt the worst, the ones he could not heal, she knew.

"Here." he pulled her hands from the voluminous folds of her too-large cloak. She flinched. The charred remnants of her gloves disintegrated with the motion, baring her naked skin to the world. Her thin fingers curled into her palms reflexively.

"No," Emaranthe whispered. She jerked them back to spare him that sight.

"Emaranthe. I know about your hands. I've known for over three hundred years," Ivo whispered. He rummaged for a spare pair of gloves from the deep pockets of her cloak that she kept for this exact reason. "Please let me help you. Just this once."

Trembling, she lifted her hands, her eyes downcast.

"Don't."

Emaranthe glanced up at him, startled by the depth of pain in his husky voice.

She swallowed, asked, "Don't what?"

"Don't ever feel like you have to hide from me. From us."

Tears burned the corners of her eyes. "I'm a monster, Ivo. I don't know what I am, who I am."

"You are no monster. You are Emaranthe, The Youngest. You are part of a family forged of lost souls. You are the one who holds the four of us together in this world."

"I could have killed us, Ivo." she stared down at her bared hands in horror. Reddened, scarred, smeared flesh covered every inch of visible skin. "I can't live with that knowledge."

"Then live with the knowledge that you saved us again when all hope had failed."

Ivo's large hands tugged the gloves over her misshapen, scarred, fingers with a gentleness that twisted her heart.

The familiar weight of the gloves was a relief. She closed her fingers into a fist with a grimace and let her hands fall into her lap, her gaze locked on the charred hem of her cloak.

Ivo's great warmth vanished, and suddenly bereft of his steady, warm gentleness, she sagged back against the rough stone wall. She heard them making camp, for yet a second time, through a fog of anxiety and fear.

Shaking fingers, curled with pain, tugged the indigo hood over her head. Safe in the warmth and shadows, she cried silent tears.

***

Ivo watched her curl into herself against the rock face. Thin shoulders that bore far too much weight of their world shook with suppressed sobs. Heartsick, he turned to the grave faces of Jadeth and Jaeger.

Jaeger grimaced. "How is she?"

"She's hurting," Ivo grunted, at a loss. At Jadeth's horrified look, he hurriedly reassured her.

"Not like that. Her injuries from the blast are healed, thanks to you."

"Her soul?" Jadeth whispered. "She could have died, Ivo."

"Don't you think I know that? I can't protect her any more than you can," he growled. He reached for the helm that he had tossed aside. He righted it and stared into the empty eyeholes, lost in thought. "She doesn't want to be protected. She thinks she has to bear everything, that it is all either her fault or on her..."

"She will be alright, Ivo," Jaeger said. "She may be too young to have to bear the burden of our fate, but bear it she does with a sense of loyalty and spirit that I have never seen the like of. Her heart is as powerful as she is. She saved me, brother. I do not deserve such."

Ivo traded pained looks with his brother, his frown increasing.

"Don't Jaeger, please. None of this is your fault."

"I blame myself, as should you," Jaeger muttered.

He stalked away, leaving Ivo silent and weary. He let his brother go. He had to.

"Aren't we a sight?" Jadeth sank onto her haunches with a grimace. Aches and pains were not always healed by her power. Ivo followed suit and they both stared in miserable silence across the darkened valley below. Their newest camp was not ideal, but there were few options on a narrow trail cut into a mountain teeming with the enemy.

At least the storm had settled, leaving only the distant echoes of thunder to roll through the valley. The sharp wind continued to slice at them, but Ivo was in no mood to calm it.

He closed his aching eyes. "Yes, we are."

***

The fitful wind dragged around them, then eased as daylight, though still half-hidden behind thick clouds, broke. Jadeth and Emaranthe, slept on huddled together against the rock wall, a dying campfire between them and the silent men standing guard. The barely-lightened sky was icy and misty with the wind stilled and everything was damp.

Ivo and Jaeger stood guard side by side, arms crossed—towering sentinels. They had ganged up to make the women rest and had earned glares and raised eyebrows from both females. In the end, even Jadeth had to acknowledge that Emaranthe needed rest more than anyone and had acquiesced too.

Haunted eyes watched from the shadowed depths of her hood. They fixed from time to time on each of her friends, a pang of despair settling deep in her chest. The thought of losing them had been too much.

They were all she had left and she would die for them. She had no memories of a past to comfort her. Nothing. Not even her real name. No people. No memories other than the last flickers of life before a cruel death. The story she had told the people of Stone Hold had been romanticized over the years. In truth, there was nothing she remembered but those last few moments of the storm-like creature and dying, on fire and alone. Whatever had happened had marked her forever with scars that no healer of their order, not even Jadeth, could heal.

Somewhere thunder rumbled. Emaranthe closed her eyes. She rolled over as the ground beneath her trembled. The thunder drifted into nothingness and she realized that she was what was trembling, not the earth.

Chapter Five

Thunder cracked, and one of the women shifted behind them. Jaeger turned and watched Emaranthe as she drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders and rolled over with a faint sigh. He turned back and caught Ivo's inquisitive look.

"She's still asleep?" Ivo asked. At Jaeger's nod, he crossed his arms over his chest. "That thunder is ominous brother."

"It is." Jaeger scanned the still cloudy sky with a frown. The thunderstorm had drifted away to the upper reaches of the multi-leveled plateau. For now. "Something is coming."

"I see nothing moving below." Ivo gestured to the valley floor far below. "And that storm hides the top of this mountain."

Jaeger frowned. He studied the wide desert valley that stretched out before them. Minus the threat of the enemy, the desert was beautiful. Rock spires in shades of reds and oranges rose in narrow fingers along the valley floor an atop the distant silhouettes of other plateaus. Many smaller plateaus and narrow gorges lines the valley. He watched an enormous windmill far across the valley on the other side. Its colossal green blades spun with lazy indifference, pumping the water from the distant river, no doubt.

"Mirena would have loved it here," Jaeger said suddenly, his eyes still on the windmill. "She had always talked about traveling to the south to see the Burning Desert."

Empty blue eyes stared ahead, lost in thoughts and memories that had been pushed aside in order to survive a world gone mad. "And here we are in the one place she will never get to see."

"Jaeger—" Ivo jerked his helm off.

"No, it wasn't your fault, Ivo," Jaeger said, his eyes still unfocused, remembering. "I never blamed you, even after all of these years."

"I should have been—"

"No, I should have been there." Jaeger closed his eyes. "Mirena was going to make fish soup for the sunrise festival, remember? She'd been planning it for days. Our home smelled like raw fish for weeks and Anya wouldn't stop complaining. "

"Jaeger—" Ivo swallowed, his voice thin.

"—she was brushing Anya's hair when I left. It had wanted to curl in the damp sea breeze." Jaeger ignored his brother and spoke as the tide of bitter memories consumed him. Anya's hair, so long and wild —a mane of brown waves, just like her mother's. He remembered her vivid blue eyes sparkling with mischief as he'd blown her an adoring kiss goodbye. He'd then pulled Mirena close and kissed her fully on the mouth, with an unspoken promise for later —

A promise he'd broken.

Pain—agony—despair.

"Jaeger! Stop!" Ivo snarled. He flung his helm down. It bounced and clattered away, hitting the red sandstone wall and tipping to a halt. "Don't do this to yourself again!"

"I let them die—" Jaeger choked out. His shoulders slumped as guilt and pain pulled on him, turning his face into a mask of despair. "I wasn't there to save them. They'd trusted me..."

***

"Brother, no one could have foreseen that day," Ivo said.

His brother's wife, his little niece... their lives traded for a hunting trip.

Almost against his will, he remembered returning to their small village, proud of their manly accomplishments and feats of prowess. Their kills were impressive and would feed their whole seaside village of Saro-Shir. Sea and Wind, it meant in Sarhiran, their native language.

So ironic.

Saro-Shir, over three hundred fifty years ago

Instead of a village full of family and friends, there was a sea of death to greet them. Black water gushed and swirled waist-high as Ivo waded into what had been the village circle, pale and mute with shock. Tense with fear beside him, Jaeger, dropped the rope of the sled and plunged into the swirling dark water, with a scream so terrible that Ivo's heart twisted.

"Mirena! Anya! Maet? Faet?" Jaeger's croaking bellow choked off as he suddenly vanished beneath the sucking black water. Ivo, horror pushing his heart into overtime, followed.

"Jaeger! Stop!" Ivo lunged and grabbed hold of his brother's vest and towed him upright. The water, now surging to his chest, was icy and thick. Unnatural. Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the chill raced along his spine. A torrent of dread and fear sucked at him as he watched his little brother search vainly for his wife and child.

Ivo joined him, his throat raw from the frigid dampness and screams, but he'd never leave his brother's side. "Anya? Answer me! Mirena, where are you? Mother? Father?"

Ivo stumbled through the flooded streets of his village behind his brother, numbed in more than body. The amount of destruction the eerie water had done in apparently so little time was unnerving. Sturdy rock-walled homes had tumbled like toys. Splintered carts, mangled produce, and the bloated bodies of chickens and pigs floated on the evil current, pushed by a wind that threaded from every direction at once. There was no escaping the biting pull of the wind or the seductive tide of water it stirred with angry shrieks.

Crates, chickens, and cracked and mangled wood frames, but no people—Ivo shoved past these as he and Jaeger searched, thrashing wildly through the water, screaming against the foul wind. The water kept rising, tugging on skin, hair, and cloth, pulling them... and in the boiling, frothing torrents where the wind and waves met, little maddening whispers peppered Ivo's mind—join us... join us ...join us...

The mad voices filled the flooded village, taunting... calling...

Ivo finally found the foundations of Jaeger's home—even the great stone walls were torn and washed away, the thatched roof a collapsed pile of reeds and timber drifting in the soulless current. Hoarse from screaming, tears blurring the world askew, he watched his little brother wade through the torrents of water, white-eyed with anguish and horror, as he searched futilely for his wife and daughter.

The flooding waters continued to rise with unnatural speed, but neither paid it heed. Ivo climbed atop the remains of Jaeger's barn to get a better view. Wrapped in the loathsome wind, his body bent against the unnatural urge to flee from it and vanish into the churning water below. He clung to the rafters in desperation, his gaze on Jaeger's frantic, leaden, splashing and thrashing below as he tore about, tossing drifting chunks of wood aside.

It was no use in the end.

The rising water forced Jaeger swim at last, his limbs slow and heavy with exhaustion. Ivo, shaking, clinging to a sodden wooden beam, felt his fingers seize as the howling wind grew stronger and the voices in the roiling water grew even more seductive—join us... join us...

As Ivo watched, Jaeger vanished beneath the black water. At first, his brother thrashed his arms, resisted, but as his fingertips slid below the surface, he stilled and simply let it take him.

Ivo wailed, cried out against the tearing wind...but the mad voices grew irresistible at last—join us... join us... join us... and Ivo plunged after him.

Howling with exhausted rage and grief, he flung himself deep into the cold darkness after his little brother. Ivo had given it no thought. The black void beneath the water was a swirling vortex and he tumbled and tossed on the violent current. Brief images of other things in the black water... a crate... a beam of wood, a cartwheel... Jaeger's limp, wide-flung arm...

Ivo kicked his sluggish legs and lunged after his brother. His numbed fingers gripped an unmoving arm. What little light was left faded, and the only thing that was left was the black numbness of the dark water churning them endlessly beneath the wicked wind and his brother's arm clenched in his grip. At least...at least he was with his beloved brother...

The cruelly laughing voices whispered... join us... join us... join us...

Eternity happened, maddening dark eternity. One of nothingness that felt almost, almost, like...peace.

Then the water drained away in a rush of light, sound, and motion. Ivo inhaled, felt the weight of death vanish, the spin of the ground beneath him, and the urge to breathe again. He gagged, coughed, and sucked air as if his lungs could never fully fill again. Something or someone next to him was also choking, gasping...

"Jaeger! Jaeger!" Ivo choked, gagged on more water. It gushed from his mouth and nose in dark trails. He pried his eyes open and blinked at the light. To his left, Jaeger jerked himself upright, his eyes glazed with confusion.

***

Ivo jerked to the present as his brother stumbled beside him with a keening cry. Jaeger bent at the waist, hands on knees, grief tightening his ashen face.

"Jaeger, you must stop. Mirena is gone. Anya is gone." Ivo swallowed the words he wished he could say, wanted to say, but the unrelenting wind shoved them back into his throat.

"Maybe, maybe they are here too. Maybe they are like us," Jaeger whispered. The wind returned and whipped sand about their feet as he spoke. "There are so many lands left to search, so many other Immortals."

Ivo closed his eyes, feeling very old and tired. Thunder rumbled, closer this time, the reverberations shaking the ground beneath them.

"I'm sorry Jaeger." Ivo moved away from Jaeger and retrieved his helm with a sigh of despair. "I'm sorry."

Jaeger straightened and turned to look at his brother. Sad blue eyes locked with troubled green and held for an eternity.

"I know. I—I don't know why," he mumbled, his blue eyes misting, then freezing into anguished chips of ice. His breath fogged the air with his despair. "I wish I had stayed dead."

"Don't say that," Ivo growled as the wind eddied and swirled about them in a rush of fury. It settled as Ivo stilled and his pained gaze dropped to the gritty red ground. "Don't say that."

A deep, earthy, rumble filled the air. He stopped and traded frowns with Jaeger.

"What is that?" Jaeger asked. He spun and stared up the barely visible trail. The rumble continued, louder and angrier. The rock and dirt beneath their feet groaned and creaked as if cracking from within.

Emaranthe shot upright as her cold stone bed shifted and buckled, sending pebbles and debris raining from the cliffs above. She stumbled toward Ivo, dodging the raining rock. He gripped her arm to steady her.

Jadeth followed on her heels, coughing. The rumble became a roar as the sky darkened and clouds swirled and frothed above them. A thread of light and a flash of purple streaked across the sky far above them.

"What's happening?" Jadeth asked. She squinted at the odd clouds as they fought the shifting, shaking ground to remain upright.

They watched the roiling purple clouds swirl and mass together until a sharp flare of inky light lit up the sky. Black shadows erupted out of the light, shifting and slithering with each crackle of lightning. The ground beneath their feet shook, buckled. Dust billowed, covering everything and turning the garish purple light into a reddened miasma. The inky shadows spread until they blanketed the top of the plateau.

"That must where they're coming in," Jaeger slipped his ax free. "Whoever is summoning them will be there."

Ivo released Emaranthe reluctantly, and reached for the plain short sword hidden from mundane view, and drew it. Emaranthe moved until they stood nearly back to back, her staff held up as if to press the invading gloom aside. Beside them, Jaeger and Jadeth took similar defensive stances, legs braced against the heaving earth.

Ivo studied the rumbling path ahead of them and muttered, "If we don't stop them now the valley will be overrun in hours."

"The Dro-Aconi will have a general surrounded by defenses," Emaranthe added. "We must be careful, it's likely a trap to lure us away from the Starstone."

Ivo nodded, his gaze drifting between Jaeger, Emaranthe, and Jadeth. They remained in formation and broke into a steady trot, heads bent against the sharp wind.

***

The narrow path swung left around a hairpin turn. Both Ivo and Jaeger shouted, dug their boots into the ground, and skidded to a halt. Jadeth and Emaranthe slid to a graceful stop beside them, hammer and staff readied. Ominous thunder rumbled from above as the clouds rolled and swirled with the evil shadows in an inky fury. A hole cut into the red rock beckoned, black and silent.

"What is it?" Jadeth frowned and let her hammer drop to her shoulder. Emaranthe slipped past her, blinking as dust and rock continued to spill down the cliff walls. The turbulent wind whipped and dragged her pale braids from her shoulders.

"The mines," Emaranthe said. "We have to keep them from reaching the Starstone. If there is another entrance up top we may be too late already."

Ivo frowned at the pitch-black rectangular hole cut into the cliff, his dark brows drawn and lined. If it came to a battle inside the mines, there would be little room to maneuver, and everyone knew how perilous that could be.

"We have no choice," Emaranthe said. "This is the only path."

"Let's finish this." Ivo's hand clenched around the hilt of his sword until the leather of his gauntlets creaked.

"Be wary, I'll take the back." Jaeger shifted his feet, ready to spring.

"Can we have light in there?" Jadeth licked her dry, cracked lips. "What if there are bottomless pits?"

Emaranthe caught and held Jadeth's gaze. She nodded and lifted a hand, palm up. A small, ghostly, flame ignited. It flickered and twisted in the stiff wind. She cupped her fingers, shielding it, and its soft light steadied and brightened. All watched the small flame with a sense of dread and hope.

"Ready? Emaranthe, follow behind me, then Jadeth, then Jaeger," Ivo said. He stalked into the darkness, sword readied, not waiting to see if they would follow. They would.

***

Jaeger followed on their heels, his gaze wary and watchful in the dim light. Both hands gripped the shaft of the ax. For long, tense, moments the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the swift and sure steps of their boots echoing in the dark.

The timber bracing infrequently shoring up the crumbling stone walls of the narrow mineshaft appeared ancient. Jaeger ducked as the roof abruptly lowered, cursing softly. Ahead, tiny Emaranthe was the only one who could walk unbent. He hoped it widened out soon. No one could fight in such cramped quarters. The flame lamp cast a puddle of gold about their feet and the fast-moving shadows of their legs and arms marched beside them along the walls and ceiling.

The shaft dove steeply down for many yards before angling up again and veering sharply to the left. Every so often another shaft would drift off to the side and they would hesitate in caution before resuming their steady run. At one such offshoot, Emaranthe halted with a gasp.

"Wait!"

Jaeger froze, his attention pinned on her. Ahead, Ivo turned to face them, his eyes glinting within the heavily shadowed eyeholes in his helm.

"What is it?" Jaeger asked when she continued to stare down a side tunnel in silence.

She spoke carefully, as if fearing to disturb something, "There's something here."

Hair raised on the back of Jaeger's neck as he peered into the darkness. What had captivated her?

Finally, Emaranthe lifted her arm higher, dragging the golden glow and their shadows along the stone walls. The side shaft was empty and silent, but still she stared into the blackness beyond, head tipped as if to listen.

Ivo joined her, nearly bent double by the low ceiling, and frowned suspiciously into the dark with her. "What do you see?"

"It's not what I see, but...feel. This." Emaranthe stepped into the side shaft and lifted her arm high above her head, as close to the stone ceiling as possible for her diminutive frame. The flame in her hand flickered and twisted on an unfelt draft and an iridescent red glow bloomed within the rock above the flame. "This is what they're looking for, Ivo."

The red glow brightened and spread, spiraling and streaking along the ceiling and down the walls. The veins of red continued to multiply until they raced down the ever branching tunnels, lighting them up as they went. Before long, they could see down a long stretch of tunnel and a half a dozen more that veered off on all sides.

"Wow, that's something I've never seen before," Jadeth gasped. They watched the mesmerizing dance of red trail down the mineshaft until it vanished into its depths elsewhere. Bathed in the iridescent light, they traded amazed—and simultaneously worried— looks.

"Raw Starstone," Jaeger muttered. He inhaled deeply and shifted his ax to his other hand. He traced a glowing red vein with a gauntleted finger, not surprised to feel the warmth emanating through the armor. "I didn't know it could be found so close to the surface. I thought this stuff was buried deeper within the ground."

"It should be," Ivo replied. "And this is the most I've ever seen."

The glow was bright enough to make them squint now. Static crackled and forked along the vein making the red glow shift and undulate. It...it resembled blood pumping through flesh and Jaeger dropped his hand and wiped the cool metal against his hauberk, suddenly uneasy.

Emaranthe whispered, "This Starstone could power many portals. We have a big problem."

She let her arm fall to her side with a weary sigh. Her little fire flickered and died, leaving them bathed in the vivid red glow of the Starstone veins. Now charged with her power, they would glow for days. Their ability to remain undiscovered was limited now.

"We must get to the surface," she said. "They haven't reached these tunnels yet, but that doesn't mean that other tunnels haven't been discovered."

They pushed themselves into a swift run. Emaranthe's flame rekindled in her hand, small and white-hot. Ivo reassumed the lead, his sword raised before him. Nothing evil lurched out of the dark tunnels to waylay them as they wound through the maze, higher and higher toward the surface.

The first hint of inky, clouded sky showed itself when they angled around a steep turn in the tunnel and a rectangle of grim light appeared. They halted as the mineshaft quaked and rumbled from the force of the evil shadows close by. Dirt and dust-choked the air. Emaranthe closed her fist over the flame and it flickered and died.

"Keep close, keep wary," Ivo hissed. He crept toward the exit. He noted the exposed

landscape outside the mine shaft, the terrain, and enemies with a single glance. "The Dro-Aconi's shadows stretch across the expanse of the plateau. I cannot see what evil is stirring within from this distance."

"Let me see." Jadeth poked him in the shoulder. Reluctantly, he moved aside to let her slip to the front. She dropped into a wary crouch, her keen gaze narrowed on the gruesome turmoil within the odd tangle of shadows swirling about the plateau.

"There are a few soldiers. They guard a fifth figure in the center. I can't see who it is, but it's definitely the creature controlling all of this," Jadeth hissed over her shoulder.

Ivo's features tightened. "None are even trying to enter the mine. Why?"

"Are they waiting for something?" Emaranthe struggled to see around the wall of taller and broader bodies blocking her view. Being very short was often a problem.

"I don't know. They're just pacing around," Jadeth replied. "The central figure is just standing there. Waiting for something."

"I don't like this, Ivo." Jaeger sank back onto his heels, letting Emaranthe peer around him at last. "Something is wrong here."

"I agree, but what do we do?" Ivo grunted.

"They haven't the ability to mine the Starstone," Emaranthe gasped. "They need tools and manpower, things that skeletons and zombies don't have the capacity to use."

"Where would they get help?" Jadeth frowned at the central figure, wishing she could make out who or what stood there.

"No, they need workers with intelligence," Emaranthe whispered.

Jadeth stiffened. "Like the Tainted?"

Emaranthe sucked in a sharp breath and reached for her friend's hand. The Tainted were those lost to the dark power of the Dro-Aconi. They were all that remained of a people known as the Windwalkers. Winged, powerful in innate magic, but mortal, they were the first conquered people before The Fall. The only living and arguably unaffected Windwalker left was one of the three who ruled the Immortals of The Unknown Sun.

"We need to take them out, fast, Ivo," Jadeth's voice shook. "We can't let them call the Tainted here."

Ivo nodded, his gaze roved the huddled group. "What's the plan?"

Jaeger hesitated. "If they haven't moved ahead with obtaining the ore already, we can also assume it's a trap for us, Ivo."

The uneasy silence was filled with the sounds of their harsh breathing. Their gazes dimmed as the thought settled.

"Yes," Ivo said. "And that is what worries me. We need to move fast and knock down everything out there before they can call for backup."

Heads nodded and lips pinched white were the only answer he needed.

They crept out of the shaft into the barely-brighter light. The clouds roiled and swirled in the gloom. A peal of thunder rattled the rocks beneath their feet. They hugged the cliff wall to the left, skirting the open landscape in favor of the cover of the few spindly bushes and craggy rock outcroppings.

***

Emaranthe gripped the staff and it gleamed with smoldering fire as she bent and crept along behind Ivo. She studied the soldiers guarding the hidden central figure. They were singularly evil, twisted, beings—slightly higher forms of life than zombies and skeletons. Instead of empty eye sockets in fleshless skulls, twin beads of black fire burned as eyes. Dark robes hid rotten flesh and bare bone. Skeletal fingers clutched Sabers, knives, axes, and shields with little skill. Puppets strung along by the master hiding within their undead ranks.

Necromancer. A shiver worked up Emaranthe's spine. A fissure of worry gnawed at her for a split second. A necromancer was an Immortal, like them.

"Ivo," she whispered to his broad back. She flattened a gloved palm against his side, feeling the radiant warmth beneath the cool metal armor. He froze but didn't turn. "Ivo, it's a necromancer."

He flinched and a low growl vibrated her fingers. She didn't have to explain it to him. And Jadeth's gasp behind her was enough.

"Do we know who?" Jaeger rasped.

"No," Emaranthe shook her head. "The last necromancer I heard of vanished long before we joined The Unknown Sun."

"Damn."

Ivo exhaled slowly and Emaranthe let her fingers fall free to curl into a fist at her side, his cool warmth fleeting. She understood his turmoil and shared it. Fighting another Immortal was unheard of, but then an Immortal twisted into the evil servitude of the Dro-Aconi was supposed to be impossible.

Apparently not. Immortals, the creatures created by The Four to fight their war for them, were made, in theory, entirely of morally incorruptible souls with pure hearts. Souls that had been plucked from the living and stuffed into the dead over and over, in theory.

If that wasn't a recipe for corruption...

"This changes nothing."

Ivo's voice broke Emaranthe away from the dark spiral of her thoughts. A quick glance back at Jadeth and Jaeger and she knew that their thoughts, too, had been led down that path.

Ivo held up a hand. They halted as near to the enemy as they dared, behind a bush and rock outcropping at the eastern edge of the plateau.

"We need to bring them down quickly," Jaeger said. "Get them away from the leader. We don't know the extent of a Necromancer's full powers."

Emaranthe added, "The Necromancer will fight by summoning more of the undead. That's where his strength lies."

"Ivo will distract the soldiers and try to pull them away from each other. Then he and I will focus on the Necromancer and work to take him out," Jaeger replied. "You work on the soldiers, Ema, keep them away from our fight. Jadeth, you cover us and back us up where needed. Don't let anything get past you and into the mine."

At everyone's nods, Jaeger shifted his ax. The razor-sharp edge bled water and froze. Ivo freed his shield, the motion sending a nearly invisible gust of wind ricocheting around him. The wind eddied and twisted until it swirled before his battered shield, creating a blanket of buffeting air, barely visible by the swirl of fine dust. Unlike Emaranthe's fire, their gifts were subtle and easily overlooked by the enemy in the heat of battle. An advantage they may need.

Jadeth held her hammer low to the ground so that its healing glow would not attract unwanted attention. The gritty sandstone dirt shifted and sank beneath the weapon, leaving a carpet of green in the exact same shape as its shadow. Tiny vines coiled and waited for their orders.

Emaranthe inhaled deeply. Ghostly flames licked and curled from her staff up her arm to her shoulders and over her body. The fire writhed and twisted until her entire body was sheathed in a layer of nearly invisible flame.

Ivo shot a glance at his friends and three pairs of determined eyes met and locked with his own. He nodded and turned with a blur of speed. He sent a blast of wind at the nearest creature and sprinted for the other side of the clearing, keeping low to the ground. The infuriated undead turned and screeched with slack jaws and bony arms outstretched. Unable to see Ivo, it shambled toward their hiding place, away from the rest. Soon, one followed, then another.

"Go, Emaranthe!" Jaeger barked, He didn't wait to see her move, but followed Ivo in the other direction to circle around the other way. The fifth figure, the Necromancer at the heart of the dark shadows, remained shrouded and barely visible.

Emaranthe slipped around the large boulder and waited. Shuffling footsteps halted just on the other side. A faint hiss of confusion from the undead creature was her cue. She lunged forward and grabbed a fold of its dark robe. A hungry flame uncurled from her fingers and consumed as it spread. The creature screamed and she rolled aside as a spear stabbed into the ground a moment later, missing her outstretched arm by a hair.

Dust and rock chips pelted her as it jerked free from the hard ground and the metal tip slashed again. She ducked and flung a small fireball at the second approaching creature. Its saber fell from crumbling bone fingers as she scurried to join Jadeth near the mine entrance. The odor of burning wood and bone joined the stench of death and decay. Smoke drifted on a breeze that deliberately masked her position. Heart racing, she closed her fingers around the flames that danced along her gloved palms and slipped deeper into the smoke cover. She crept around the rock, following the faint green aura of Jadeth's magic.

Clawed hands shot out of the smoky shadows and snapped closed around Emaranthe's throat. Pricks of pain sharpened as the claws dug into her flesh and her ability to breathe stopped. She twisted her body, kicked her heels and struggled to form words. The fire simmering below the surface of her skin faded as the edges of her vision darkened.

***

"Good idea with the smoke, Ivo." Jaeger peered into the smoke laced gloom. He watched the first two creatures go up like torches and scatter into piles of gruesome ashes. The smoke billowed and masked the rest of the plateau, stirred by a swiftly sharpening breeze. The remaining creatures seemed confused, and milled about as if suddenly directionless.

Two down, three to go.

He sensed Ivo shift to reposition for the attack, but instantly his brother's hiss raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Jaeger frowned. "What?"

"The Necromancer's gone."

"What?" Jaeger peered into the gloom, alarmed. A gust of wind shoved the low hanging smoke aside, revealing an empty place where they'd last seen the Necromancer.

Twin gasps, gagging chokes, from behind made him pause, then spin on his heel. He stared in dawning horror at Jadeth and Emaranthe.

"No!" Jaeger cried out.

***

Ivo twisted, his sword aimed and arcing. He froze with the blade inches from Jadeth's hip. The muscles of his arms trembled with the effort to keep the deadly edge from slashing at the women dangling from the iron grip of the Necromancer. Rage burned the edges of his vision white and the wind revolted, turning into a gale that pushed the smoke and shadows to the very edges of the plateau.

Long, claw-tipped fingers wound around Emaranthe and Jadeth's throats and held them high in the air with no effort. Searing red eyes, outlined in something dark, narrowed in the gloom.

"Hello, boys." Sharp teeth gleamed. "It's nice to finally meet you after all these years. I am The Necromancer. Let go of your toys and I'll let go of mine."

Ivo's heart twisted and a low growl rumbled on the wind. He watched as Emaranthe scratched and clawed at the woman's hand, her movements growing sluggish. Wide brown eyes, devoid of fire, locked with Ivo's. She tried to suck in a breath, but couldn't, and Ivo felt his own ability to breathe seize. In the towering Necromancer's other hand Jadeth struggled, her long legs kicking valiantly.

Ivo complied. His sword hit the rocky ground and clattered to a halt. His helm followed, his sweat-dampened hair stirring in the uneasy breeze. He didn't pull his gaze from Emaranthe or Jadeth to watch the sword fade into nothingness. From the lack of surprise on the Necromancer's face, she was well aware of their god forged weapons' abilities. He also knew that if he tried to draw the sword again, her claws would dig deeper into their throats before he could swing.

Jaeger followed his move a moment later. Ivo felt him flinch, felt the cold rage radiate off his brother as the ax vanished and his helm hit the dirt.

"Two men, an elf, and a child," the Necromancer cackled. The hair stood on Ivo's arms. Her voice was as lush and as deadly as her beauty.
Chapter Six

"What do you want, Necromancer?" Ivo growled the question, his entire body a livewire of anger. The wind buffeted his back as if to shove him closer. Only iron will and the sight of Emaranthe's pained brown eyes stilled his feet. To act now would kill her, kill Jadeth, and it would be his fault. Again.

Red eyes stared them down, the sneer smearing into a scowl nearly too fast for Ivo's stunned mind to follow.

"You may call me Alarandia, Earthlander."

Ivo ground his teeth until his jaw ached. "Alarandia, release them. We are willing to talk."

Black vines erupted out of the ground and twisted and twined around his legs as soon as the words hit the wind. Another set of black tendrils shot out of the rocky earth and wrapped around Jaeger's ankles before he could react. The vines contracted, dragging both to their knees. More slithered and twisted up from the rocky earth and snared their arms and wrists.

Fury burned in Ivo, his pulse pounding in his ears until he was nearly deafened to all other sounds. He struggled and jerked to free himself, to no avail. Jaeger struggled to free himself; his eyes pinned on the now barely-moving women still clutched in the Necromancer's hands.

"Fools! Your words are useless here. Men," Alarandia said. She sneered down at them and laughed. Thunder rumbled above them, shaking the ground beneath their feet and sending the roiling shadows slithering. "They never think beyond the obvious. Why do you think I'm here, hmm?"

She turned away with a long-suffering sigh and flung Jadeth and Emaranthe to the ground with a careless flick of her wrists.

They landed heavily, and for a long agonizing moment the women lay still some distance away.

"No!" Ivo howled. He lunged forward only to be jerked back by the vines. He swallowed, sweat stinging his eyes, but he forced his gaze back up to the towering woman pacing between them and his companions.

Ivo studied her, memorized her face. Pale and gaunt in the inky shadows emanating from the unnatural storm behind them, she was once beautiful, he saw. Long dark hair, curly and wild in the gathering wind was barely restrained by a crown made of sun-bleached finger bones. Red pupils glowed from black eyes and full lips twisted in a permanent sneer.

Alarandia watched them. Keenly. Her red eyes glowed in the inky air, her interest tangible. She was waiting to see what they would do, could do.

Jadeth gagged and shuddered, her lithe frame jerking with the force of her desperate attempts at breathing. She dragged in a violent breath at last and coughed before slumping back to the ground with a ragged gulp of air. Scarlet fingerprints almost glowed on her pale skin.

Ivo's gaze swung to Emaranthe as fear clawed painfully in his chest. He watched in relief as she continued to breathe, but appeared to be unconscious. He sagged to the ground.

"Thank The Four," Jaeger whispered beside him. "Get up. Get up."

***

Emaranthe inhaled with a gasp, her small body jerking with the force of trying to get air into her burning lungs. Coughing and choking, she blinked to clear the fuzzy dark spots that clouded her vision. With each breath, her throat stung. She shifted shaking arms beneath her body and pushed herself up off the ground a few inches. For a long moment, everything tipped and she swayed, dizzy. Shadowed within the hood, her gaze darted to the methodically pacing woman and she stilled.

"Interesting," Alarandia purred. Her mouth turned up in a vicious, catty smile. She spun on her heel and paced between Emaranthe and Jadeth, blocking Ivo and Jaeger's view of them. She stared at the snared men.

"You are Immortals, yet you still feel fear over their safety."

She spun again, her towering curls bouncing on her shoulders. This time she watched Emaranthe with naked interest. Emaranthe hid a twitch as the volatile woman's gaze raked her with disgust. She relaxed her arms just enough to give the illusion that she was still senseless. Hidden in the folds of the cloak, one hand closed around her staff. Patience.

Alarandia frowned and a puzzled look crossed her face, then was gone. "Why did those idiot gods of ours bother to immortalize a child? What fools. Were they so desperate they needed children to fight their war?"

"Why don't you let us go and we'll tell you?" Ivo tested the vines with a growl, but they didn't give.

The ground quaked beneath Emaranthe as thunder cracked high above. The clouds roiled and the sky grew darker as they thickened, casting their shadows along the ground. She watched as the shadows spread, tendrils of darkness that writhed and billowed greedily as if they sought out prey.

"If you want a real fight, then fight us," Ivo added.

Emaranthe twisted to face him while the Necromancer's gaze was elsewhere. Ivo jerked as their gaze's met and relief eased the lines of strain on his handsome face. At her silent urging, Ivo blatantly tugged on the coils around his wrists, digging them in deeper until the skin grew raw and broken and keeping the bitch's attention away from Emaranthe.

He snarled, "Or are you afraid your sorcery is no match for us?"

"Brave words, warrior. What is your name?" Alarandia asked. She raised a finely arched eyebrow and paced closer, her hands on her curvaceous hips.

"I am Ivo, son of Veriuc! Free us now or you will pay, Necromancer!"

"Ah, Ivo. I have heard of you," Alarandia laughed. "You are well known in the Below and The Void. You speak well for a simple farm boy. Who were your people?"

"I am of the eastern clan of Saro-shir," Ivo said.

"Hmm. And you, boy?" Alarandia asked. Jaeger snarled beneath his breath and Emaranthe held hers. She was toying with them, testing them. Waiting for the shadows to strike? The two remaining undead soldiers lingered near the edge of the darkness where the shadows emanated. She squinted at it, seeing finally the fissure buried deep within. A pathway, not quite a portal, to the Necromancer's realm she called Below? It was still open and the two remaining soldiers appeared to be guarding it.

A chill of foreboding stiffened her spine. That must be the path to the Below and the Necromancer could traverse it much like Emaranthe could teleport using the embers of her own soul. The Necromancer must have a direct link to their enemy, the Dro-Aconi, and that path was the way to get to him perhaps.

"I am Jaeger, son of Veriuc, brother of Ivo even in immortality!"

Emaranthe flinched when Jaeger's voice rose over the rumble of thunder and the sound of her pounding heart. She eyed Jadeth, who finally stirred. Long eyelashes blinked in fury within the shadows of her tumbled red hair and their gazes locked. Emaranthe nodded and pulled the energy deep into the core of her soul, her muscles tensed and ready.

"Well, this is a surprise. The Four called brothers? How pathetic," Alarandia sneered, spun on her heel again, and paced away. Her boot kicked at Jadeth as she passed by and both men growled in fury.

***

Jadeth threw herself away from the kick with a hiss. She leaped to her feet and tossed a braid over one shoulder, exposing long, delicately tapering ears that twitched with her wrath.

"Let them go," Jadeth said. "I'm warning you."

"Foolish girl!" Alarandia laughed. "You are a healer, what can you do to me?"

Jadeth took a step and a slender green vine curled from the cracked, parched ground beneath her feet. It wove around her left ankle and up her leg. Another step. Another vine radiating green energy crawled up her other leg. Dancing lightly on the balls of her feet, she reached for the warhammer.

The Necromancer paced with her, her violent sneer now carved into incandescent rage when Jadeth hefted the massive weapon. Jadeth watched in mute glee when Alarandia had to force her shaking hands to settle into fists.

"It's just us, bitch," Jadeth taunted. "Life versus death. Sounds right, doesn't it?"

Ivo and Jaeger renewed their struggles against the shadow vines. Sweat dripped freely from the angled planes of their faces as they twisted and fought, but the vines held and the keening wails of the two remaining undead soldiers intensified behind them.

"I can do more than heal with this warhammer," Jadeth added. The vines began to emit an eerie green glow. The bruises on her throat immediately faded.

Alarandia's eyes narrowed. She reached for the shadows at her feet and dragged one off the ground. It shifted and solidified into a black spear. Jadeth's ear twitched in grim amusement.

"What's that? Death on a stick?"

Jadeth struck. She swung the hammer in a gravity crushing arc. The weight of it bowled through smoke and air but the Necromancer shifted, her body slipping into the shadows and becoming part of them. The flat, metal head of the hammer rushed through empty air and slammed into the ground. The earth rippled, buckling beneath the god forged weight of the powerful weapon. Dust now clouded the plateau, mingling with the shadows and smoke.

"Oh, this could be fun!" Alarandia laughed. She rode out the heaving of the earth without missing a step and reappeared in the shadows directly beside Jadeth, her voice a gleeful purr. She slashed the spear at Jadeth's lean torso.

Jadeth danced away, forcing the Necromancer to spin and keep her in sight and blind to what was going on behind her. She raised the warhammer again, letting the green aura pulse in faint, distracting, waves.

Emaranthe's gaze locked on hers, a vibrant gold deep within the shadows of her cloak. Her friend waited patiently, and a smile twisted the corners of Jadeth's mouth up.

She swung again, harder and lower, forcing Alarandia to dance aside this time without reaching for the shadows to cloak her. Furious red eyes bored into Jadeth's. A roiling ball of smoke appeared in the Necromancer's other hand and was flung in one sharp motion.

Jadeth twisted her body and leaped into a smooth, aerial cartwheel, scarlet braids flailing with the nimble motion, her lean muscles pushing her into the air several feet. The ball of smoke sailed beneath her and just missed Emaranthe's head.

She shot her friend an apologetic glance as she lightly landed in a crouch with the bitch still between her and Emaranthe, and herself between the men and the Necromancer.

***

Emaranthe's eyebrows shot up at the close call. Jadeth had always been a lean, muscular elf who never took her strength or abilities for granted. They were certainly paying off today. She watched the duel, painfully aware of the furious men trapped in the Necromancer's evil vines. Patience was a virtue, but not today. She chaffed, the urge to leap into the fray sending a surge of energy through her body. She held it in check, caged it, but it rattled the cage bars in time with her heartbeat.

Emaranthe clenched her jaw and watched Alarandia's thigh-high leather boots glide in and out of her field of vision, and then glanced at Ivo and Jaeger, who were watching Jadeth and Alarandia face off in mute anger. She had known, of course, that there was more to her elf friend than she had let on. Secrets were common, even among the truest of friends, and they were all carrying baggage from their pasts.

Emaranthe had no memory at all of her real name or her people, Jadeth was still on a path of vengeance for her mother's death, Ivo lived to protect them because he hadn't been able to protect his niece, and Jaeger lived with the desperate hope that his wife and child still roamed the wilds of the east, and had escaped a cruel fate.

Emaranthe shook herself from her musings and studied the situation. Everyone else's weapons were out of reach, unable to be drawn, but Emaranthe's staff was a steady weight in her right hand. She glanced through the curtain of her hair. Alarandia was still busy with Jadeth.

She shifted her weight to her left. Beneath the thin folds of her cloak, she dragged it close to her side. Jadeth had scored another insult and Alarandia was now pacing frenetically, her gaze burning with anger and pinned on Jadeth who was matching the Necromancer's wary circling with a wide, brittle smile.

Emaranthe shifted positions again.

Ivo's gaze slid past the confrontation between Jadeth and Alarandia and locked on hers. A small, triumphant smile pulled the corners of her mouth up as she stood and flung her cloak aside. It billowed as she lifted her staff high. Ribbons of flame crackled and swirled down its length.

Alarandia spun and let out a screech.

Emaranthe's lips twisted into a sad smile. A brisk wind dragged her hair over her face in a gentle caress. In that split second, ghostly tendrils of fire slithered and wove through the tangling strands and her gaze burned hot.

***

Ivo inhaled, alarmed, as Alarandia darted forward, clawing and scratching with a shriek at the small woman who wore fire like a cloak. Emaranthe spun aside, easily dodging the hasty attack, the strands of pale hair drifting across her eyelashes in a blur of ghostly flames. Ivo's fingers twitched with the urge to brush them away.

Then Emaranthe vanished.

Alarandia's startled cry cut into the howling wind as her fingernails scored only air. She staggered and swung about, her curses lost in the rumble of discordant thunder and heaving earth.

Emaranthe reappeared in a blur of motion and reached for the shadows at Ivo's side. He gasped as her nimble fingers closed around the pommel and slid his god forged weapon free. She flickered away again in a torrent of embers and ashes that stirred on the wind, the massive weapon clutched to her chest.

"That's not possible! How are you doing that, child?" Alarandia cried out.

No one had an answer, and Ivo's pounding heart threatened to tear from his chest. None but the chosen immortal could wield their own weapons. Unless...she was not just an immortal? Ivo's mind raced. Could she be something else? Her past was a mystery to everyone. A raging shriek snagged his attention back to the Necromancer just as she slashed the dark spear at Jadeth.

Jadeth twisted and blocked the blow. Sparks of green and black sizzled as the god forged weapons of life and death clashed. The Necromancer sidestepped, towering curls flailing within the gruesome confines of her headdress.

Everyone gasped as Emaranthe reappeared, Ivo's sword flashing in the eerie gloom. She twisted away on a flicker of flame and smoke once more only to surge back into view behind Jaeger.

Ivo froze when a sharp edge flashed with purpose out of the corner of his eye. The vines holding him captive severed and disintegrated. His fingers closed into a fist as he stood. Beside him, Jaeger shook off the remnants of the shadow vines and climbed to his feet, murder in his gaze.

Emaranthe vanished into the smoky gloom a third time, trailing embers that drifted between Ivo and Jaeger on a breeze no longer contained. A metallic clatter by his feet jolted him into awareness. Heart racing, Ivo stared at the empty place beside him, where she had stood, and reached down for the sword gleaming on the ground.

"Unwilling to face me, child? Are you playing hide and seek then?" Alarandia screamed into the gloom as she spun about, trying to locate the tiny Mage. Ivo's eyebrows rose when she didn't notice that her prisoners were now on the loose.

Ivo lifted his sword with a growl. He reached for his shield. It appeared in his hand with a gust of cold wind. His grip flexed on the bands with every enraged breath he took.

Jaeger hefted his ax and swung it in a testy arc. Ice crept over the blade, completely encasing it. His eyes frosted over until they glinted like frozen chips of rage. His breath clouded the air.

Jadeth gripped her hammer until the heavy metal creaked beneath the pressure. With a hiss she stabbed the end into the ground and a burst of green light raced up the handle and outward, creating a wide green aura. She sank into a crouch, the movement dragging sharp shadows on the cliff walls.

Alarandia turned with a cry to find the two warriors and elf armed and surrounding her. Wild eyes darted among the three and searched the shadows for the fourth.

"So, a fight you want then?" she asked. Her lush lips curved into a wide, slightly deranged smile.

Ivo bit back a feral growl and adjusted his grip on the sword. It gleamed in the eerie green glow, as light to him as the wind, but his gaze turned to the murky shadows. Where was Emaranthe? She hadn't reappeared. Fear crept in and clawed at his heart. He shook off the feeling. He had to focus.

He paced to the left, his eyes narrowed on the Necromancer. Her crimson lips were curled into a sneer that made her elegant face ugly.

***

They continued to circle. Jadeth grabbed her hammer and moved to pace just behind Ivo and Jaeger, the aura stretching and bending shadows as they moved. Able to see better than the men, she watched a small flicker of smoke drift from behind a second, larger boulder across the plateau. It vanished quickly in the dim light and reappeared for a split second behind a bush at the very edge of the roiling and swirling band of shadows. The remaining soldiers still milled about, seemingly unaware of the looming confrontation.

"Tell us, Alarandia, what will you do if we send you back to your master without the Starstone?" Jadeth asked. She had to keep the woman focused on them and not Emaranthe. She guided their circling group until the Necromancer's back faced the shadows. Behind Jadeth, the entrance to the mine yawned like a black hole. It howled, a hollow moan, in the winds cast around them by Ivo. A shiver raced with goosebumps up the back of her neck.

"I answer to no master, elf!" Alarandia stopped circling and turned the full force of her brittle anger on the elf. "And I don't care about the Starstone. That's his problem, not mine."

"Oh, I thought you were the Dro-Aconi's pet, sorry." Jadeth giggled. She shrugged and flipped a red braid over her shoulder. "Why else would he sic you on us like a dog?"

"Um, Jadeth?" Jaeger sighed. The towering woman's eyes widened, and then narrowed dangerously. "Do you really need to piss her—"

"Pet! Dog!" Alarandia screeched. "I am no one's pet, elf bitch!" She raised both arms and dark tendrils spiraled out of the ground at her feet. They swirled in a choking cloud. The ground trembled. Multiple spears of small white bone jabbed up through the earth.

Ivo snarled and motioned for the other two to back up as the bony spears twitched and scratched in sets up out of the ground. Finger bones emerged first, then whole hands. The cracks widened as the hands clawed and raked apart the rock and chipped arm bones pushed free. Jadeth shuddered and moved to keep pace with Ivo and Jaeger.

With a triumphant cackle, Alarandia backed away from the half dozen skeletons erupting from the earth.

"If you wanted pets to play with my dear, why didn't you say so?" she screeched as another rumble of thunder echoed off the cliff walls. Lightning flashed above, then behind her something else, brighter.

Jadeth sucked in her breath as the lightning flared, sending shadows skating across the rocky terrain. Out of one of the shadows, Emaranthe appeared beside one of the milling soldiers. She leaped at the general with blazing hands and gripped an arm. It burst into flames just as thunder cracked the sky open. It stumbled and screeched hideously, throwing Emaranthe off with ease. She hit the ground and rolled into a crouch before vanishing. The undead's howls went unheard in the last remnants of the thunder as it collapsed into a pile of charred bone and cloth.

Jadeth barely held back a shout of glee.

***

Ivo hissed as another burst of fire behind the Necromancer drew his attention. Emaranthe dodged the sharp finger bones aimed at her face with a serene grace that stole his breath. She twisted, sweeping out a boot to trip the creature. It fell to its bony knees, arms flailing for purchase and finding only fire to grab. The last soldier flailed and screeched as the fire spread, the howls lost in the crack of thunder.

Ivo and Jaeger traded stunned glances and then shrugged. As one they launched themselves at the skeleton minions with twin roars. Jaeger's icy ax swung high, Ivo's sword flashed low, and heads and knees clattered free to litter the ground. Six piles of moldy bones dropped to the plateau floor before Alarandia.

"Ahh!" Her screech was echoed by another violent rumble of thunder as she once again found herself facing the three alone.

Lightning flared, tossing shadows. A small shape appeared in the gloom, drawing Ivo's sharp gaze. For a long moment Emaranthe stood still, her head down, in the midst of the enemy's swirling, storming shadows. When she lifted her head, her gaze found his and held. At last, looking weary and winded, she turned and focused on Alarandia.

A grim smile stretched Ivo's mouth up at the corner.

***

Emaranthe inhaled and closed her eyes against a wave of dizziness. Weariness tugged on her mind and soul. So tired. The curse of her magic was that it weakened her rapidly and without the sunlight, she had no way to absorb the energy her soul needed. Her earlier dance with death and this battle had nearly drained her.

She straightened her shoulders and turned to face the small group across the clearing. Green eyes, darkened with concern, watched her from afar, waiting for her to make the next move. She smiled for him and watched his face brighten. Ivo had always been her rock, her steady force, a gentle giant in an unjust world.

Emaranthe inhaled again and leaned into the scant patches of sunlight breaking through the clouds and shadows. She soaked in the faint warmth, the tendrils of energy gifted to her by the suns, and wrapped it around her immortal soul for just one more time this day. Flames licked up the staff, her arm, and down her body in a consuming cascade of heat. Inside the fiery shell, her gaze burned.

She slammed her eyes shut and vanished.

Emaranthe reappeared behind Alarandia in a wave of heat and embers. Alarandia spun on her heel, the dark spear raised to kill. Ivo, Jadeth, and Jaeger circled behind her.

"What?" Alarandia hissed and backed up. Her head snapped back and forth between the two sets of threats so fast that her tower of curls threatened to topple the bone crown.

Emaranthe stared up at the woman, pity darkening her gaze. The fiery shield settled and drifted away, leaving her unprotected. Ivo and Jaeger stiffened, alarm tightening their jaws.

"Do you really think the Dro-Aconi will free you if you do this?" Emaranthe asked. From the sudden look of shock on the Necromancer's face, she knew she guessed correctly.

"What are you talking about, girl?" Alarandia turned and walked slowly away from the girl, keeping the three others within her line of sight. They paced with her, hemming her in.

"You are an Immortal. You are forever cursed to fight this war, whether from your side, the enemy's, or ours."

"You really aren't a child, are you?" Alarandia whispered, swallowed. "You see things. Interesting."

"No," Emaranthe shrugged. She turned to pace as well. The wind howled and the shadows behind them rumbled and swirled. "But you are a servant of our enemy. Why?"

Alarandia raised an arched eyebrow and switched directions to pace the other way. Emaranthe mirrored her motions as the wind snagged her braids and dragged them over her face and shoulders. Ghostly flames licked the length of the long blonde streamers as she moved.

"Why not?" Alarandia shrugged, her gaze now wary.

"What else did you have? Who did you lose, Alarandia?" Emaranthe shot Jadeth a covert glance and gold locked with sapphire for a fleeting moment. She could feel the soothing green aura now.

"Were you the only survivor? Did you betray your own people?" Emaranthe asked. She watched Alarandia's face, watched the moment the towering woman flinched.

"No. I was the only one cursed. Everyone I loved, every last one, turned their back on me when I realized what I had become, what I was meant to do," Alarandia hissed. "They cast me out. Called me evil. Cursed my soul." She flung her hand high and a ball of inky smoke writhed and swirled in her palm. "But he found me and made me a promise. I want to be free."

"The Dro-Aconi doesn't negotiate, Alarandia," Jaeger darted forward, snagging her attention for a brief moment. "You are nothing but a puppet! The Dro-Aconi is using you. Don't you see that? He is evil, you are not. The Four did not give you your abilities without reason. You are the curator of the Below. You should be walking with the souls to their final resting place, guiding them."

Pain filled blue eyes lifted to the clouds. Jaeger's jaw flexed. He swallowed and Emaranthe's heart broke at the sheen of dampness on one cheek.

He whispered, "I wish you had been there to guide my wife and daughter to the Below, Alarandia. They had no one. They were alone."

Alarandia stilled, her gaze on Jaeger, her lips pursed. "That is not true, Earthlander."

Emaranthe watched the play of emotions tighten her face and turn her red pupils into pinpoints of regret...and hatred. Her heart skipped in her chest, crushing her lungs with the weight of despair as she watched the final emotion settle over the Necromancer's face. So be it.

Alarandia turned with a scream and hurled the ball of inky smoke at Jaeger. He ducked away, rolled, and leaped into a crouch. The deadly spell had rocketed over his head by a hair's breadth and splashed in smoky swirls against the stones behind him. The rock cracked and darkened, crumbled, weathering instantly as if a thousand years had passed. Breathing heavily, Jaeger stood and readied his ax, but didn't attack. His gaze moved to Emaranthe, still standing behind the Necromancer, unprotected and alone. Wordlessly, she stepped back from the circle and reached for her staff, her eyes dark with sorrow, but determined. A single nod to Ivo was all it took.

Ivo swung his shield before him and roared a challenge that echoed louder than thunder. It shook the stone beneath them and howled across the plateau. Driven by the wind it bounced and harried the Necromancer with a challenge.

Alarandia swung another ball of death smoke. Ivo ducked aside, shield high. It carved a sickening dent in the heavy steel, drawing a screeching sound that would have raised the dead, but it was made by the gods and didn't crack.

Jaeger dove as she turned, swinging his ax in an icy arc low to the ground. It slashed through well-muscled flesh on Alarandia's left calf, sending her to her hands and knees with a howl of pain. Blood, blackened by the evil of the Dro-Aconi's dark magic, splattered wide. It bled freely for a split second, and then shards of black ice grew in its place. The ice spread until her leg and both arms were encased, trapping her.

"Wait," Emaranthe whispered. Ivo and Jaeger backed away, still scowling with rage. Emaranthe approached the now kneeling, partially frozen Necromancer.

"Who is the Dro-Aconi, Alarandia?" Emaranthe asked. "We need to know. We have to stop this war."

"The Dro-Aconi is your worst nightmare," Alarandia sneered. Her gaze darted between the mage and the bristle of sharp weapons pointed her way. "Soon he will corrupt the rest of the mortals. The darkness will spread like a plague for thousands of years and we will watch those gifted by the gods suffer. We will then make the gods suffer for this."

"We will fight for this world as long as it takes, Alarandia," Jadeth said. Alarandia's smirk faltered. "And you will never be free."

"You should leave, Alarandia, before it's too late," Emaranthe whispered. She backed away, her eyes burning in the murkiness. "Leave the Starstone. Leave these free people alone. Don't return to the Dro-Aconi. You are a victim, one of his conquests. You are not going to be rewarded. He revels in the suffering of everyone, especially the innocent. Please...help us."

Alarandia clenched her fists with a snarl. The ice cracked and fell away. She climbed to her feet with attempted grace, her lower leg still encased in black ice. Her soulless eyes, still on Emaranthe, now burned with something akin to...respect.

"You are letting me go?"

"Mercy is something the strong give to the weak, Alarandia," Ivo said. "This is the only mercy you will get in this world. Use it wisely for as you know not all immortals have so big a heart as Emaranthe does."

Emaranthe closed her eyes at Ivo's sharp, cold words. Her sigh melded with the crackle of flames that slithered to envelope her again. Her eyes snapped open, saddened brown instead of blazing hot.

"We will protect Ein-Aral. We will protect the free races of our world until our bodies are dust and time stands still." Emaranthe's voice echoed loud and strong within the shield and seemed to fill the entire plateau.

The ice encasing her leg melted and Alarandia backed away, her eyes darting between them. She stumbled over something behind her and turned to find smoldering piles of cloth and bone— all that remained of the soldiers. With a hiss, she turned and glared before her gaze settled on the flame-shrouded girl who was closest.

"I will see you again, girl. I look forward to it." Alarandia nodded at the mage and lifted her hands skyward, toward the center of the dark clouds where the fissure radiated the unnatural shadows. A flare of dark light erupted downwards, capturing Alarandia and lifting her into the air. Floating free, her mass of curls in a halo around her face, she could have been considered beautiful. Once. Long ago, before evil and death had stolen her soul.

With a grinding, angry screech, the inky shadows jerked free of their tenuous grip on reality. The shadows and the Necromancer faded into nothingness.

The ground beneath them heaved and buckled, then settled with clouds of dust as the last of the darkness faded from the plateau. The inky gloom drifted away as a fresh breeze chased the rolling clouds. Daylight returned as the suns appeared with the vanishing clouds.

Ivo watched the blue sky appear and sighed. Beside him, Jaeger traded worried glances with Jadeth.

A sharp elbow in Ivo's side jerked his attention back down to his friends. He caught sight of Emaranthe and inhaled sharply. A spike of fear jabbed him deep inside.

Emaranthe leaned on her staff with trembling arms. Her head bowed, her hair trailing in the soft breeze hid her face.

***

"Emaranthe?" Ivo moved to her side, not sure if she wanted to be touched. He reached for her hands. Gloved fingers eased their grip off the staff and curled into his. She exhaled deeply and squeezed his hand back. Finally, she lifted her head and sad golden brown eyes looked up at the sky. A small smile twisted one corner of her mouth up.

"Emaranthe, how did you know what she wanted?" Ivo asked. Her eyes flickered with pain but stayed focused on the vivid summer sky. It was late afternoon and the air was soft and warm against her cheeks.

"It was the same thing I wanted and sought in the years before you saved me," she whispered. She tugged him down to her level and brushed a gentle kiss against his unshaven jaw. The soft press of her lips burned into him twisted his heart and stole his breath all in one painful rush. It was a beautiful type of pain.

She whispered, "Thank you, Ivo."

Emaranthe let him go and walked across the clearing to join Jadeth and Jaeger, who stood staring over the cliff at the valley beyond. The valley, and village, they had saved.

Ivo joined them a moment later, his mouth set as his heart rebelled against what his mind had already decided. Ivo sighed and they turned toward the cliff. They stared far off at the reds and oranges of the valley far below them, not quite wanting to have to retrace their path through the mine just yet. The pillars of stone glowed in the warmth of the suns, and the distant ledges glinted as the giant blades of the windmills spun lazily.

Jaeger asked softly, "Ivo, what did she want?"

He wasn't talking about the Necromancer.

"She wanted death," Ivo said. His voice and heart broke on the last word. He'd known her life had been hard, but he didn't know how or why. The gods had played a cruel game with the one person who didn't deserve it.

Jaeger bowed his head but said no more.

Ivo swallowed the lump in his throat. "Come, our work is done. For now."

He jammed his sword into the shadows at his waist and slung his battered, cracked shield over his shoulder where it vanished into shadow as well. Even though he knew they had won, his heart still sat heavy inside his chest—they had won but a small, insignificant battle—the war was still all around them. Where there were corruptible mortals there would be the Dro-Aconi using them to destroy Ein-Aral. He turned and lead them toward the mine entrance.

"Do you think we've won today?" Jaeger stowed his weapon and shot the now-clear sky a wary look as he moved to follow.

"We may never know. We can only hope Alarandia has rethought her position with the enemy," Ivo replied. He ran his hand through his dark hair until it stuck up much like Jaeger's. "It was almost too easy, brother."

***

Emaranthe watched the brothers from the edge of the plateau with a slight smile, then turned and tugged her hood up to cover her hair. In the safe shadows of the hood, her gaze lingered on the tall, dark man that had done more than save her life. Ivo had captured her heart and held it unknowingly within his large, strong hands. The barest twitch and it would break and that was something she had learned to guard against in the dark years before they'd met. A pang of regret deep within her chest sucked the breath from her lungs. She held her hand over where her heart beat as if to keep the frail thing within her chest and safe.

For nothing was ever safe in Ein-Aral and nothing could change while their enemy roamed, unknown and unchecked.

Tears burned the corners of her eyes but she swiped them away covertly. The fresh breeze toyed with the pale braids as she turned to Jadeth.

"Are you ready to head back?" Jadeth stretched her arms above her head, much like a cat enjoying the sun. Her scarlet braids had come loose and now tumbled loosely about her shoulders. "I am. I am so sick of skeletons and zombies."

"I don't know, maybe you'd like this then?" Jaeger held up a cleanly cleaved skeletal forearm and shook it playfully at her.

"Ugh! Get rid of that!" Jadeth yelped. She slapped at the offering and knocked it out of his hand. He laughed out loud and both Ivo and Emaranthe turned to look at him in surprise.

Green eyes met brown and both smiled. It was good to hear Jaeger laugh. In the many years they had traveled together he had always been the least carefree and happy. Their smiles faded again.

Maybe one day, after their world was no longer threatened, they'd all be able to laugh. And love.

"Come, let's ride." Ivo's face tightened. One day was far off, unfortunately. He jammed his helmet over dark hair again and turned toward the mine entrance. "We need to get back to the village."

Jadeth and Emaranthe followed behind Ivo, and Jaeger took up his customary position in the back. The darkness in the mine was no longer suffocating but tinged with the faint off-red of the still glowing Starstone veins. It gave just enough light for them to find their way without needing Emaranthe's little flame lamp.

They journeyed throughout the rest of the day, unhampered by foes or weather, and enjoyed the fresh air and warm sunlight. The path wound down the cliff faces in many twists and switchbacks. The once-surly wind was now a breath of life. They reached the bottom as the suns sank into the south, casting vivid red and gold fingers of light throughout the valley.

Emaranthe watched the sunlight play on the red cliff walls, her eyes shadowed from deep within the frayed hood. Alarandia was gone, for now, and their job was done. For now. She lifted her arm in an unspoken signal, and her stallion appeared beyond a nearby cactus. Smiling, she stroked his nose and patted his stiff coat.

"Hello, old boy. Miss me?" Emaranthe glanced over her shoulder as the others mounted their stallions, and moved to do the same. She leaped onto the horse and gathered the reins. They moved as one down the path toward the small village.

"I think I need a vacation," Jaeger said. He dragged a hand over his face. Emaranthe had been pleasantly surprised when both he and Ivo had declined to wear their helms. She could see now the weary lines tightening Jaeger's mouth and his wide shoulders sagged under his armor as if more than its heft weighed him down. Ivo also wore his armor with stiffer shoulders than normal. It made her wish once more for an end to the war. She longed to see what freedom would look like on them, Ivo especially. Her heart flipped at the thought, but just as swiftly another, darker, one replaced it...she would never be free without her memories.

"I could use a pint in the Broken Bow Pub." Ivo shot his brother a look and earned a half-smile from him an Emaranthe as old memories surfaced. Good ones this time. The best, actually. The only ones she had.

"I bet I could out-drink you this time," she smirked. Their gazes met over their horse's heads. Jadeth glanced between the two in confusion knitting her eyebrows. She jammed the tail of a scarlet braid into her mouth.

"Okay, what's the joke?" she asked. She arched an eyebrow a Jaeger, who struggled to keep a smirk off his face.

"Well, this one time..."

"What?!" Ivo snarled. He jerked back on the reins. The beast jumped and danced with alarm, but beneath Ivo's expert hand he calmed. He stared past the women.

Jaeger's smirk faded into a scowl as he looked past Jadeth and Emaranthe to the oddly quiet village that appeared as they rounded the last bend.

Emaranthe slid down from her horse and studied the empty shadows. Nothing moved and no sounds betrayed the presence of... anyone.

"It's empty," she whispered. She dropped the reins of her stallion and darted forward. Fear sank deep in her chest as she slid around the corner of the nearest clapboard shack and halted at the center. "No!"

The bonfire was out, not even smoldering in the late afternoon light. She dragged a glove off her hand and jammed it into the coal bed. Cold. She slid the glove back over her hand and turned as Ivo and Jaeger crept into the clearing with ax and sword ready.

Keen eyes sized up the village in one look.

"No bodies," Jaeger climbed the rickety steps of the nearest shack and prodded the door open with his ax. It swung wide on worn leather strap hinges and sagged inward. A quick glance told him it was empty... of belongings too. "And no possessions. They've cleared out."

"Why would they leave?" Jadeth glided into the clearing and shouldered her glowing hammer. Her confused gaze matched Emaranthe's.

"The fire is days cold. They didn't think we'd win. They must have abandoned the village as soon as we left." Emaranthe sighed. Her narrow shoulders hunched deeper into her cloak.

"They were cowards," Jaeger dropped off the high porch of the shack with a growl, landing lightly despite his armor. "They knew to trust us."

"No, they did what they felt they needed to do. In time they will return, but it is our time to leave here." Ivo's scowl matched Jaeger's. He watched Emaranthe's thin shoulders sag under her cloak and inhaled. Anger thinned his mouth into a hard line at the hurt on her ashen face. These people should have had more faith in her, in them.

"It isn't your fault, Emaranthe." Ivo slammed his sword back into its sheath and moved to stand before her. She bowed her head for a long moment before looking up at him. Gold eyes glittered in the shadows—but he couldn't tell if it was from fire or tears. He reached out a hand, but pulled it back. Uncertainty weighed him down as did the sharp jerk of his heart at the sight of her devastated expression. The pain behind the fire burned far more than the flames themselves. He swallowed and stepped away from her. "Come."

"Let's go. We have work to do elsewhere." Jaeger turned his back on the deserted village and walked away. The others followed.

"We need to report back to The Unknown City," Ivo said. He shot one last look at the silent village before reining his horse away. "The nearest portal is still a half-day from here."

They rode in pained silence, and for a long time the only sounds were the rattling of spiny sage bushes in the wind and the distant howl of a coyote. Darkness fell swiftly in the gorge, and with it came a bitter cold.

Emaranthe dragged her cloak tighter around her arms and flexed her nearly-numb fingers within the gloves that hid her scarred hands. Her frosty breath clouded her vision with each exhale. The others rode ahead of her and didn't take much note of the cold.

They crossed a narrow stream and caught sight of the portal's shimmering glow against the cliff wall. The portal loomed before them, giant stone sentinels carved from the very Starstone they struggled to keep from the enemy. The statues framed the blue-white light and guarded it against trespassers. It was the doorway to their City, a place for none but Immortals. They approached the shimmering light, the sight of the familiar faces etched in stone lifting the mood slightly. No one knew who had created these portals or carved the statues. No one knew who they even depicted, only that what were varied between Earthlanders, Windwalkers, and Elves. Only a half dozen portals existed and all led only to The Unknown City. Such knowledge had been lost over the years.

Emaranthe glanced back, letting the others walk through the liquid light first. All she could see in the night were the shadowed shapes of stone formations.

Goodbye...

A flash of scarlet startled Emaranthe into reining her horse to a halt. She twisted in the saddle to peer into the heavily shadowed darkness beyond the portal. Squinting, she could just make out the color against the backdrop of low, scrubby trees bordering the path behind her.

Goosebumps traveled up her arms as the blob of color halted and seemed to come into focus despite the darkness. The red billowed on a wind that did not touch Emaranthe, and the chill of recognition was fierce, yet foreign.

Wide brown eyes locked with Emaranthe's beneath the banner of wild scarlet curls. A girl child, nearing womanhood, with coltish legs and new curves, watched Emaranthe silently with wise, haunted eyes. The girl's clothing was nothing liked she'd seen before, a simple knee-length white robe, belted at the waist and gathered with intricate knots at each shoulder. The neckline dipped gently to the swells of her budding breasts.

"Who are you?" Emaranthe called out, breaking the silence. She yanked the reins about to face the girl and for a split second everything tilted, then righted. She blinked, her vision oddly blurry. Just as quickly her sight returned and the red-headed girl still stood several yards away, watchful and silent. Long, slender fingers clutched something at the hollow of her throat.

Emaranthe's hand moved to mimic the girl of its own accord, but when her fingers grasped nothing at her own throat she dropped her hand back to the reins. The girl smiled and nodded and then turned on her heel and slipped into the dense desert scrub brush without making a sound.

"What's wrong?" Ivo asked. Startled, Emaranthe swung back around in the saddle with a gasp.

"What? Oh, there's a..."

She turned to point out the child, but only the empty darkness waited. The girl was long gone. Something else nagged at the back of her mind. Something important that she needed to remember...

"Nothing. I thought I saw something," Emaranthe said. "But it was nothing."

"Come then, they are waiting," Ivo said, frowning.

Emaranthe turned back to the portal and its shimmering glow made her squint. The glow was bright, like liquid light, but it didn't cast far.

Certainly not far enough for her to have seen the red-haired girl.

Rubbing her hands along her arms, she turned away from the darkness and thoughts of the girl. At least, she tried to, but goosebumps still rose with an eerie chill and a sense of déjà-vu.

She walked the horse through the portal and into the comfortably-warmer great room of the keep. No one knows how or even why, but the portal always sent the four of them straight to the throne room where the three leaders of The Unknown Sun held court. As far as Emaranthe knew, no other unit was ever sent there. There were three other portals spaced out around the castle city.

She slid off Arcon's broad back in one motion. A sharp slap on the rump sent his dish-sized hooves clattering across the stone floor and out the main door. He would find the stables on his own.

"It feels good to be back," Jadeth smiled down at her tiny friend but Emaranthe didn't answer or look back. Unusually uneasy, her shoulders hunched even deeper into her cloak.

Her gaze darted around the busy chamber. The throne room of The Unknown City was packed with people; servants, aides, those come to declare claims and hash out issues. Of all the castle cities in Ein-Aral, only The Unknown City had survived the ravages of time and war. Hidden in a remote location and only reachable by the portals placed strategically throughout the continents of Ein-Aral, it was the one remaining intact stronghold in their world. Home to all three races for centuries, it had become a cultural and military hub. It was here that their leaders sat upon cold thrones and waited with calculating gazes.

Ivo led them toward the thrones where the three Lords of the Races sat. Rodon, the Earthlander, and Ishelene, the Tevu Elf Empress, stood as they approached. Atil, Lord of the Windwalkers, remained still, indifferent. As one they knelt before the three, heads bowed.

"Rise, Immortals," Rodon called out. His voice rumbled, like thunder. Like many Earthlander men, he was formidable to face. Dark hair, shorn short by a blunt blade, stuck to his head in sweaty clumps. Tanned and weathered by age and the hardness of life, Rodon was likely one of the oldest original Immortals yet breathing.

Most Immortals fell to death and were reincarnated into a new body more than once. The few who still survived in the first body they were given after The Fall were called The First Fallen. Rodon was a First Fallen, as were Ishelene and Atil.

Emaranthe idly wondered if she was a First Fallen as she stood, letting the hood fall back. She had no memories of prior lifetimes, but that was never guaranteed to any immortal. Most Immortals only actively remembered their current bodies' memories and tended to move forward as that person in name and but somehow pieces of their prior personalities would appear or merge with the new one. Residual memories were there, of course, which made for some problems.

"Tell me the news from the south." Rodon tugged on his beard and paced between his seat and the platform steps. His silver eyes swung between them but often halted on Emaranthe with a frown. She returned the look steadily. She knew that she was a pet project of Lord Rodon. She abhorred his obsession with discovering what made her tick, how or why The Four resurrected the soul of a warrior into a teenage girl's body. It was painful because she had nothing to share. Her entire knowledge of herself began when she woke up after that brutal battle with the creature.

"We convinced Alarandia to leave, Lord Rodon," Jaeger said. He bowed again. "Without the Starstone."

"Convinced, eh?" Rodon grunted. He didn't ask for details. He didn't care just as long as the job was done. He had no time for tales with his people, the Earthlanders, dying by the thousands or becoming mindless minions of the enemy. "Good. Your mission was successful at least."

"Yes, my Lord," Ivo said.

"I have another quest for you and your companions."

Ivo frowned and traded looks with them. Emaranthe caught a glint of annoyance in his steady gaze.

"My Lord, with all due respect, we have been without leave for a good amount of time."

"I am sorry. This cannot wait. You are the best warriors I have. It is an order."

Rodon's gaze found Emaranthe's again. She bowed her head, breaking eye contact.

"Yes, my Lord," Ivo grunted. He slammed his helm onto his head. Emaranthe inhaled sharply. She instantly missed seeing his handsome, angular face, especially the scruff shadowed curve of his strong jawline. She knew without having to look that his gaze would glitter with muted anger now that he'd hidden it from the world.

"Have you ever heard of Orin-Iad, the Citadel in the Sky?" Rodon asked. He studied their faces carefully as if the name would ring a bell. Emaranthe shifted uneasily, her gaze on her boots. His sharp silver gaze speared her. She felt it without having to look up.

"The name is not familiar outside of legend, my Lord," Emaranthe whispered. The busy room stilled at her soft words.

"Everyone else out." Rodon bellowed into the cavernous room. It emptied shockingly fast until only the Lords and their small group remained. Then he stilled and all gazes locked on her. Sort of.

Emaranthe looked up finally and her gaze found Atil, the Windwalker Lord. He didn't look at her, couldn't.

The places where eyes should have been were empty, blackened holes. Holes he'd gouged into his own skull to keep the madness spread by the Dro-Aconi at bay. His people, the Windwalkers, the winged warriors of the mountains, had been the first to fall to the unseen invader. They were enslaved, tortured, and killed without mercy. Atil, one of the few Windwalkers immortalized in The Fall, had been a captain of their legions, and upon his death and reincarnation into another Windwalker body, had taken the throne and his own sight.

At her words, Atil had hunched forward on his stone seat and tilted his head toward the sound of her voice, not caring that the shoulder length strands of tangled brown hair hid most of his face. He preferred it that way. His wings flashed, beating at the air restlessly.

He said, "You speak with knowledge, Child of Fire. Tell me what you know of the legend."

Emaranthe leveled her gaze on his empty eye sockets. Within the shadows behind his hair they seemed to see all too well.

"I know that an entire Windwalker citadel, and all of its inhabitants, vanished soon after the Immortals were first chosen," she said. "It is said that The Four sought to save your race from annihilation by hiding them away forever. They stole an entire city and sent it into the sky to be kept safe from evil."

Emaranthe had figured they were children's tales, legends and myth, with little truth in the words.

Atil sat back, a triumphant grimace tightening his maimed face. He flicked his hair back with a shrug of a shoulder and folded his wings again. He didn't refute her version, nor expand on it, and judging from Rodon's increasingly annoyed glare at his fellow leader, he wouldn't get the chance.

"What say you, Atil?" Rodon asked.

"You wish to send them on a fool's errand, Rodon. Orin-Iad is gone," Atil said finally. His scarred face fell into a stony mask of indifference that made Emaranthe gasp. "Even I cannot find where my own homeland had once been. All evidence of its existence vanished with it."

"Why are we to search for a missing city, my Lord?" Jaeger asked when the silence stretched.

"I am not concerned about the city. I, too, think it long gone and mere legend. Its people are now dust and ash in the wind," Rodon grunted, shooting Atil a sideways glare. The Windwalker growled under his breath, anger tightening the lines at the corners of his empty eyes. "It is what was rumored to be held there that I am after, and I alone know of its value, and hope of its return. Hope that because it did not below to those forsaken creatures, it was left behind."

Ivo frowned. "My Lord, if this is a quest for a trinket when we are best served to fight in the tides of war..."

"I never said its value was to be for me, Ivo. Be wary of how you speak," Rodon hissed. Green eyes traded glares with silver, but neither backed down.

"I'm not sure how to find the place a missing city once was, My Lord," Jaeger interrupted the silent battle. "Perhaps you can clarify? Will Lord Atil be our guide?"

"No, Atil stays. He has no time for such nonsense since he doesn't even remember where his damned city even used to be. No, my spies report of a map that indicates the object's location. A map made by a sole surviving Windwalker from Orin-Iad that perished soon after giving the clue," Rodon said. He turned away and dropped into his cold stone seat. Armor clanked and leather groaned. "The rumor is that it is somewhere in the south. The far south we consider beyond the current borders of civilized territory."

"So, we need to search for a map to find the place where your trinket is hidden?" Jaeger asked. His voice was flat, skeptical. "What is this trinket so that we may know when we find it?"

Rodon stood, his heavy cloak flaring wide. He paced along the top tier of the dias, his heavy boots barely missing the delicate slippers worn by the still silent elf empress.

Emaranthe's gaze slipped between Rodon and Ishelene. The elf empress had always remained silent unless directly addressed. The cold blue eyes always watched with bored interest, but behind the gleam a dark and cunning mind seemed to be waiting. Patiently waiting. She never tried to hide her cold thoughts, however, they were written on her beautiful face as if carved in stone.

So when Ishelene leaned forward and let her long hair slip like black silk to the floor, everyone stiffened and paid attention. The blue eyes locked onto Emaranthe so sharply that she had to hide a gasp.

Her cold voice rang out with authority, "Find the map. Find the location. Find The Crown of Gods."

To be continued with THE IMMORTALS PART TWO: ALLIES & ENEMIES, available now. Enjoy this sneak peak!

#

Chapter One

3 Weeks later, Sand Lake, Burning Desert, _Ein-Aral_

The women laughed. The sound snagged Ivo's attention, and he smiled. What had Jadeth said to make Emaranthe's eyes sparkle? Blonde braids glinted in the meager shade where Emaranthe sat at the base of a cliff beside Jadeth. The redheaded Elf lounged against the wall, her arms crossed beneath her head. Eyes closed, she grinned at something her best friend said.

Ivo tuned out the women and squinted against the glare of the midday suns. Sweat slid down the back of his neck as he surveyed the landscape beyond the small village. The desert stretched in all directions for at least three days.

"Tell me why we are looking for a map and a missing kingdom again?" Jaeger asked. He appeared at his brother's side, scowling. He dragged his helm off, smearing dirt and sweat along the way. "And where the hell is this map supposed to be?"

"Rodon's spies indicated it was in the far south and most likely in the hands of a mercenary," Ivo said. He sighed and looked up at the hazy blue sky. No clouds were in sight and the heat waves rippled off every surface. "And apparently not even our leaders know the answer to that question, brother."

"Well, a map isn't going to be found here in this glorious shade," Jadeth called out. She stood, brushing dust from the hem of her tunic. Emaranthe followed suit, her hooded indigo cloak a wad of fabric in her arms.

"Let's see if we can find a map of the desert around us," Emaranthe said. She pulled her sweat-slicked braids behind her shoulders, revealing a pale face flushed by the heat. "We've never strayed this far south. We need a better idea of where we're headed, and I'd rather be prepared."

"We should stay together; I don't trust this place," Jaeger said. "And I don't know if I like the irony of getting a map...to find a map."

They moved through the crowded market, dodging chickens, unruly children, and peddlers. Heat waves swirled off the colorful stalls. The stench of food, unwashed people, animals, and offal blended into a nauseating constant.

At a stall with a green canopy, scrolls of all shapes and sizes spilled out of overstuffed crates and unfurled over the rickety boards that served as a table. Ivo and Jaeger dug through the scrolls one by one until a small, tattered parchment depicting the landscape surrounding Sand Lake was found at the bottom of a crate. The sour-faced merchant reluctantly accepted their silver. His rotted teeth hadn't dented the large oval coin.

They made their way back to the foot of the cliff. The suns had dragged the shade farther away, leaving little room to study the map comfortably. They knelt in a tight circle and Ivo unrolled the brittle scroll. One corner had been torn off and the opposite corner looked like a rodent had chewed on it.

In silence, they studied the map. It revealed little other than the topography of the nearby area and the location of only two places by name in tiny, jagged handwriting. Sand Lake was a speck on the map near the upper edge, and the other location, near the center, was difficult to read. The two points were the only scraps of civilization in a desert known for its deadly nature. Outlaws, rebel Immortals, assassins, and roving Dro-Aconi minions were just some of what lay beyond the grimy outpost.

"Drag? Dragoo? I can't read the letters; can you, Ivo?" Emaranthe asked. She leaned closer and pointed with a gloved finger at the faint script. She sat up and clawed sweat-dampened streamers of hair from her forehead with a frustrated exhale.

Ivo tugged his helm off and dropped it beside him. He leaned closer and stared at the nearly illegible writing for a long moment before glancing up. Emaranthe had leaned close as well, and he found himself nose to nose with her. For a long moment, he forgot what he was going to say as he hesitated, studying her.

She had freckles on her nose.

He inhaled, struggling to force away the ache building in his chest. Wide golden-brown eyes studied him back, waiting for his input on the map. He swallowed and forced himself to look back down.

"I think it says Dragon Bone Outpost. Shed-Akr," Ivo muttered. He sat up and let Jadeth and Jaeger lean in to see. Green eyes flickered with despair as they returned to Emaranthe. Somehow, the freckles made her even more beautiful. Freckles he hadn't noticed in nearly three hundred years of companionship.

"...Well, that's a start, we could head there first, right, Ivo?" Jaeger asked. He glanced up at his brother and frowned. His brother's face was tight with pain, his eyes shuttered.

"Ivo?"

"Uh, yeah. Let's ride," Ivo snapped. He climbed to his feet, slammed his helm on, and moved away from the group. "We head for Shed-Akr to get a feel of the landscape before venturing farther."

Jaeger nodded in silent agreement and glanced over at the women, but they were busy trying to roll up the map without ripping it.

"I'll go get the horses," Ivo called over his shoulder. He vanished into the crowded market without waiting for a reply. Jaeger scowled after his retreating back.

Confused gold eyes followed as he walked away.

THE IMMORTALS PART TWO and THREE can be found here:

http://books2read.com/TIPT2

http://books2read.com/TIPT3

If you enjoyed this novella, don't worry more is coming! As of now, there soon will be at least 4 books total to continue Ivo, Jaeger, Jadeth, and Emaranthe's story. If you read and enjoyed THE IMMORTALS PART ONE: SHADOWS & STARSTONE please read THE UNKNOWN SUN, which is set in the distant future of _Ein-Aral_ , one shaped by the characters and events of this prequel and its companion books! You can find THE UNKNOWN SUN here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K1EL76Q

You can also find me on various social media sites:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/writezalot

Twitter: @writezalot

Blog: https://csmackey.com

website: https://www.cherylsmackey-author.com/

And please don't forget that reviews are a kindness to all authors!

