 
# The Sorcerer's Sword – Part 3

By Jack Cee

Copyright 2018

ISBN: 9780463283332

To find out more about the author visit: www.jackceeauthor.wordpress.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

## Chapter One

"Where is he?"

"I don't know!"

Rik repeated the question and struck the farmer again.

"Where is he?"

"I'm telling you I don't know!" The man yelled, stumping his feet in frustration. "Nobody does. He moves around and he's fast like the wind. It's impossible to know where he'll show up next."

Tired after giving out a long beating, Rik sat down and sighed. He studied the black and blue face of the farmer and pondered another way to make him talk. Remembered that he had a daughter just blossoming into a woman. Perhaps raping her in front of his eyes would loosen the poor peasant's tongue.

But Rik found he wasn't quite in the mood and, besides, it had never worked before. He was starting to think that maybe these people really didn't know the whereabouts of their elusive leader.

"I believe you," he said and searched the farmer's disfigured face for a sign of gratitude. "Still, you and your family were disloyal to the Emperor. That cannot go unpunished. You and your sons would be a useful addition to the Emperor's galleys. And pretty as your wife and daughters are, they'll be popular in whatever whorehouse I sell them to."

"No! No, please I beg of you! Don't hurt them. This is all on me, they had nothing to do with this."

Rik looked at the man in front of him. Tied to a kitchen chair, sobbing like a child. He found him pathetic and had to repress an urge to strike him again because of it.

"I'll think about it, if you explain something to me."

"Yes! Absolutely, I'll tell you anything."

From the pocket of his vest, Rik took out the mysterious object like the ones he had found on every member of the Red Assembly who he had questioned. It was a round and thick piece of reddish brown metal, about the size of a fist, on which was engraved the image of a small bird in flight. He held it up in front of the farmer's face.

"What the fuck is this thing? And don't dare lie to me or your family is going to get it."

The man nodded and swallowed nervously. Cast an eye towards the barn where his wife and children were being held captive.

"It's money."

"Isn't it a big large for a coin?"

"But it's not a coin. You see, the Red King, he has this whole army of magic people working for him. Thousands of sorceresses and sorcerers who with their combined powers can do all sorts of things you'd never even dream of. They invented these things. It's a little bit like a coin but it's value is based on its memory, on the transactions you've made and that it remembers."

"This coin remembers things? Like a person?"

"Not really like a person. But... I'll show you. If you hold it up again and look at it, look at the bird, you'll understand."

Sceptical but curious, Rik did as he said and held the metal disk in front of his face.

"I am Gura Trukam," the man said, "and this is my wealth."

Rik could barely believe his eyes when he saw the image of the bird disappear and be replaced by a number.

"Two-hundred twenty-five. What does that mean?"

"That's the amount of money I have."

"But how do you spend it without getting rid of the coin?"

"Well, for example, if I had a friend here who also had a similar coin then I could say 'I am Gura Trukam and I wish to give', and then I'd say the person's name, 'this and this amount'. The other person accepts by saying their name and 'I accept this transaction'. Then it happens by itself."

Rik looked at the strange piece of metal. The image on it had turned back into a bird as if nothing had happened. So, the Red King had given his people an invisible currency that could not be found by the Emperor's taxmen. Rik found that brilliant, although he wouldn't have said it out loud.

Content with the information he had been given, he rose from his chair. Just as he was about to walk out the door, he turned to the farmer again.

"One last thing. This magic money, what do you call it?"

"Freedom Gold, sir."

### *

Ily was, since about four summers back, cut in two by a large wall which ran through the middle of city. It had been erected after the end of the Great War, which had gone on for about three and a half cycles of seasons. Everything south of the wall was part of the Second Republic while what was on the north side, where Rahin on this day found herself, belonged to the Golden Empire.

This splitting of the old Republic into two new nations had begun shortly after the death of Elizz and her senators. Seeing that the Republic was suddenly standing without a leader, the Golden Lions had attempted to seize the power. The Republican Guard, loyal to their mission, had fought against them. What followed was a long and bloody conflict everyone on both sides wish they could forget about.

Rahin could still remember the same streets she was now walking being littered with thousands of bodies and the blood flowing downhill like a river. Peace was not something to ever take for granted and as she gazed up at what the people of Ily called The Great Divide, she felt relieved that, at least for now, peace reigned.

She spotted on the other side of the street, facing the wall, a little shop named "The Four Roots". After entering it, she put down the hood of her jacket and the shop-keeper smiled when she recognized her.

"Rahin! So good to see you. It has been far too long since last. How are you?"

"I am well, thank you. How are things with you, Su? How was Toyan?"

"Oh, she is as well as ever, that old sandbox."

Rahin took no offense at her hometown being referred to in such a way. It wasn't unusual for people in Ily to refer to Toyan as "a dusty sandbox", but when Toyanese people did it themselves it was tongue-in -cheek.

"It's Safur that's not so good," Su revealed with a sudden expression of sadness.

"Safur? Why? What happened there?"

Su gestured to her to come sit next to her on a chair behind the counter. Rahin did so and, her heart beating hard in her chest, awaited the learn what had happened to that beautiful city.

"Do you remember," Su said whispering, "how during the Great War, many dead soldiers just vanished?"

"Yes, whole battlefields of corpses seemed to have disappeared into the air. Both sides accused each other of stealing their fallen ones."

"Well, the war is over but it's happening again. Except this time it's soldiers who were last seen alive who disappear. There was this garrison right outside of Safur. The leadership of the Republican Guard hadn't got any rapports from them in a while and they weren't answering letters. So, they sent people other there who found the garrison empty. The locals were asked if they knew anything but they said the soldiers one day just weren't there anymore and everyone assumed they'd been sent somewhere else. But the Republic's emissary wasn't buying it. He ordered people to be tortured to make them talk. Some were even killed in the process. Nobody talked, because the truth was: nobody knew anything. So the guy ordered all the grain storages of the city burned to the ground. Then they destroyed the temples, the beautiful Spirit temples our ancestors had carved into the rock of the mountains. With mallets they went at hit. For days and days until there was nothing left but dust."

Rahin shook her head. It seemed things weren't much better on the other side of the wall.

"Oh, before I forget. I prepared something for you, Rahin."

Su got up and got a wooden box from a shelf. Opening it, she revealed its content: about twenty little bags of Toyanese spices.

"Just like the lady ordered. I hope they'll make the Ilyian food more tolerable. These people, I tell you, they don't know how to flavour a stew."

The two friends sat and talked for a while, until Rahin looked out the window and saw that the sky had turned pink and orange with sunset light.

"I'll better get going. Thank you once more for the spices. You're sure you don't want anything for it?"

"No, no, no. You and..." She lowered her voice. "And the Red King have already done so much for me. For all your people. I'm telling you: if anyone in this world should be emperors then it's the two of you."

Moved by Su's words, Rahin gave her a long hug before they parted. When she stepped outside, she saw a group of street kids playing on the rain-wet pavement. They were kicking an empty glass bottle between themselves, probably for lack of a better toy. A painful sympathy grabbed Rahin as she saw their dirty faces, torn clothes and sad children's smiles. She called them to her.

From her dress pocket she took out the sprouted bread with dried figs she had wrapped in a piece of cloth. After breaking it in five equal parts, she gave them one each and smiled with a motherly affection as they all, one after another, thanked and bowed for the gift.

She stood for a moment and watched them go back to their game. It always amazed her how children could keep such a playful disposition in situations which would have turned most adults bitter.

"Some want the vermin gone, others feed them bread."

Two golden lions were leaning against the border wall and had been observing her with the children. One of them was staring with hateful eyes at her while picking away dirt from under his fingernails with the point of his dagger.

"The Emperor has not outlawed feeding the hungry, last time I checked."

Her words made his face flush red with anger.

"Are you giving me attitude, you little shit?"

They both smirked at her, as if letting her know that they looked forward to teaching her a lesson. Rahin found herself in that moment longing back to the days of the old Republic. Things hadn't been much better then but since their leader had become the most powerful man in the land, the Golden Lions were on a power trip which never seemed to end.

"No," Rahin said reluctantly. "I'm sorry."

She turned and walked away without awaiting a response. But she could hear him mumble under his breath:

"Dusty faggot."

### *

Rik was in a good mood. He wasn't anywhere near finished when it came to his investigation but he had learned a lot in the last few days and was confident that he could deliver quite an interesting rapport to the Emperor. When he then decided to reward Rik, like he often generously did those generals who helped protect the Empire, he wouldn't mind it at all. In fact, he had already his eyes on a beautiful slave and a triad of war horses he would acquire with the money.

Perhaps because he was having such a good day, Rik did not become angry when he saw the cloaked figure standing in the middle of the dirt road.

"Get off the trail, you peasant," he said only slightly annoyed.

The man held up his head and Rik saw that he was blind, with empty orbits where his eyes should have been.

"Ah," Rik said. "I understand. You might not see it, old man, but you are standing in our path. Would you please move aside so me and my men can continue our travel?"

"Unfortunately, no. My king has sent me for you. He needs to speak to you of important matters."

"Your king? Who is that? The only ruler I know of is back in Ily."

"I speak of the Red King, of course. I will take you to him but your men must stay behind."

Rik shook his head and exchanged glimpses with his soldiers, who laughed with him.

"You must think I'm stupid. If the Red King really sent you, which I seriously doubt, then the fact that you want me to go alone means this is a trap. Go away. You are making an ass of yourself."

The man pulled down the hood of his cloak and lifted up his walking stick.

"Well, if you won't come of your own free will then I'll have to drag you to him by force. Are you sure you want to go that road?"

Rik was beginning to feel irritated. He wasn't going to let some blind fool ruin an otherwise beautiful sunny day like this one.

"Just kill him," he whispered to his second-in-command.

The soldier obeyed. He dismounted from his horse and drew his sword. Right as he was about to strike him down, the man suddenly hit him in the gut with the end of his stick. He struck him again in the head, making him drop his weapon.

The blind man quickly picked it up and tossed aside his walking stick and his cloak. He spun the sword in his hand before slashing the throat of the soldier who was getting back up on his feet. Dark red blood splashed back on his clothes and face as he turned his head towards Rik, like he knew exactly where he was.

Seeing that the man was holding up the point of the sword as if to challenge him, Rik decided to take care of it himself. He signalled to his men to stand back as he dismounted. Confident that this would be quickly resolved, he unsheathed his weapon and charged.

As if he had been able to see him coming, the blind fellow jumped aside from the first swing of Rik's sword. He had probably heard him running, Rik thought, but he wouldn't be able to counter his next attack. This proved to be false as the man blocked it with ease.

He stopped the next three attempts also and Rik took a few steps back. It seemed this scruffy looking peasant had an eerie capacity to predict where Rik would try to hit next, most likely based on the swishing sound of his blade. So, as silently as he could possibly move, Rik retrieved the dagger that was hanging from his belt. He held it up, aimed and threw.

The man took a short step to the side and the small weapon flew by his head before disappearing into the thick shrubbery behind him. Before Rik had a chance to bring up his sword again, he was leaping towards him. He landed on top of him and began to beat him between the eyes with the pommel of his weapon. One. Twice. Three times, and the world went dark.

Rik heard a man's screams but it sounded far away, like it was echoing to him from a great valley below. He opened his eyes slightly and found everything blurry. There was something wet and warm underneath him. When he turned his head, he saw vaguely human shapes lying on the ground. Golden armours on their bodies let him know that these where his men. Beneath them was a large pool of blood.

He tried to stand up but the blurriness started to spin around him like some strange fever dream. A figure was standing over him. Although he could only see its shadow, he knew who it was. Suddenly, a sharp pain in the back of his head. And the world fell into darkness once more.

A flickering red light was the first thing he saw when he awoke. Small flames danced in the otherwise unlit place where he was. Rik tried to move but found his hands had been tied behind him. Underneath his arms was the back of a wooden chair.

There was a man standing by the fire. He was stirring the ambers with an iron poker. Not because it was necessary. It seemed rather that he was doing it distractedly while his mind was in another place entirely.

"Who are you?"

The man turned around. He had pale skin, icy blue eyes and a thick red beard. On his belt a sword was hanging. One with a pommel shaped like a crown.

"You are awake," he noted calmly.

"Where am I?" Rik demanded to know.

"That isn't important," the red-bearded man said and got a chair from a corner of the room that was slowly starting to become clearer to Rik's tired eyes. "You won't be here long. In fact, you'll get to go home once we're done here today."

"Done with what?"

He did not answer. Instead, he went over and got a ceramic bottle from a small table standing against the damp cave wall.

"Here, drink," he said and held the bottle mouth to Rik's lips.

"How do I know that it isn't poison?"

"Suit yourself," he said and shrugged. "I thought maybe you needed some hydration after being out for so long. You know you slept for like a whole day, right? But you probably needed the rest. It seems you've been a very busy man, harassing my people and all."

He sat down on the chair and took a sip of water. Reflections of the fireplace flames swayed in his blue eyes. Red on blue, like an inferno on a lake of ice.

"You are the Red King?"

"That's what they call me."

"I imagined you taller."

Rik meant to offend but the man only laughed. He put the bottle on the floor, sat back and took some yellow leaves out of his vest pocket.

"I get that a lot," he said as he rolled them together.

Ryda leaves. The Red King was rumoured to have made a small fortune selling those, along with alcohol and other intoxicating things banned by the Emperor.

"You know, I was just yesterday visiting some of my subjects that you harmed in your search for me. Your methods to make people talk are quite extreme, to say the least. Raping a young woman in front of her parents... What monster even thinks up something like that?"

He held up a finger and a small flame rose from the tip of it. With the fire he lit his ryda cigar.

"So it's true what they say about you?"

"Don't change the subject," the King said and took a deep breath of yellow smoke. "Anyway, I thought it would be proper to discuss with your victim what punishment you should get. I have to say, she is more merciful than I am. She said I should at least let you keep one."

"Keep one what?"

"Testicle."

Rik felt suddenly ill. He tried to move his hands again but they were still firmly tied up with rope. To make the spinning in his head stop, he told himself that the King was only joking, probably to scare him into cooperation.

"But we'll get to that later. Now let us discuss this little investigation the Emperor sent you on. Tell me everything you found out."

"Only that you are the head of something called the Red Kingdom or Shadow Kingdom. It used to be called the Red Assembly and was a merging of several marauder's bands. You've since left behind robbing and raiding and instead all your income comes now from the commerce of forbidden substances. That's all I know, okay. I won't talk. I am of no threat to you."

Rik was rambling out his words, stumbling over them. Cold sweat was starting to run down the back of his neck. The King blew out rings of smoke towards him. It smelled like fall, with its wet and dying leaves.

"Oh, you know a lot more than that. You are aware of my powers and probably also that I am the same man who killed over a thousand soldiers in Ily about ten winters past. We found a Freedom Plate on you so I assume you are aware of the Freedom Gold. Either way, it is too much and I am afraid you have become a liability to me."

The King got up and unsheathed his dagger. He drew the point of it across Rik's cheek. It burned and Rik could feel warm blood starting to run out of the wound.

"No! Wait! I won't say a word, I swear! We could make an alliance. I have powerful connections. I can get you anything you want, anything you've dreamed of!"

"I know you won't talk," the King said as he wiped the blade on Rik's shoulder. "Because here's what you'll do instead: you're going to go back to the capital and you're going to tell the Emperor that all these rumours about a Shadow Kingdom and a Red King are nothing but legends. Stories people tell each other when they are displeased with things the current government does. You'll tell him that you have found no evidence whatsoever that there is even a shred of truth in them. And if you don't, I'll know. Then I'll come find you again and I'll cut of your cock and shove it up your own ass. With your balls already gone, you'll make a pretty little eunuch."

"Wait! You said you'd let me keep one!"

"No," the King said and looked pensively at his blade. "What I said was that she thought I should let you keep one. Like I said: she's more merciful than I am."

### *

His name was Rafinuematoko but that was kind of a mouthful so most people called him Rafi. He had lived about five thousand days, or fourteen cycles of season as they said further north. Seasons did not exist in Numera but the weather was always the same: warm and sunny; and that was why it had become such a popular vacation spot for the wealthy.

Rafi was strong with a fair amount of muscles he had built up by working on the docks by the sea. He was also tall and it wasn't unusual for people to mistake him for being a bit older than he actually was. This robust but lean body should have given him great pride. It certainly arose the jealousy of many boys his age. But it had come to fell so unreal to him, as if he inhabited it but it wasn't really his own.

Had it ever been his to begin with? The men in his family had always been destined to do labour which with time slowly wore them down. By day, his body belonged mostly to his employers. By night, it was bought by a different kind of people.

Voices outside his bedroom window shook Rafi out of his own thoughts and he was reminded that he needed to be going. He quickly put on his evening clothes, a purple wraparound men's skirt decorated with golden details, and went out into the kitchen. A pleasant smell of banana, chicken and coconut milk welcomed him but he felt too empty to be able to muster any hunger.

Knowing that his mother would insist on him eating something, he lied to her that he was on his way to dine with a friend. She knew as well as he did that he wasn't on his way to meet a friend but she bought the part about him having dinner later. In reality, Rafi's clients rarely bought him any food. It was only in his mother's mind that these wealthy tourists showered him in presents and delicacies.

Rafi made his way down to the beach and to an establishment called "The Shiny Pearls". He stopped by the edge of the tiled patio facing the ocean. As a poor, dark-skinned boy from the desert land, he wasn't considered worthy to enter without invitation this place whose clientele were rich upper-class people from the Two Nations' capital.

By one of the decorative palm trees, Rafi saw her. She was chatting away with some friends, laughing here and there at a remark one of them made. Her name was Duruka and she was a little older than his mother, although she did not have the same tired look in her eyes that comes from a lifetime of labour and disappointment.

It didn't take long for Duruka to notice him. Rafi felt relieved that he wouldn't have to wait but another part of him was upset. Deep down, he wished she would forget about him.

Duruka came out to meet him and put her arm under his. That simple touch pushed him into that strange state of mind where nothing, not even himself, felt real. His soul seemed almost to leave his body on these occasions, as if it needed to get away to not feel the pain of his humiliation.

They took a stroll down the beach as she talked away. Rafi could understand only about half of what she was saying in her broken Toyanese. He wondered if she knew that and if she cared. After doing this job for a while, he had come to realise that most of the women he serviced were primarily out after being the centre of someone's attention.

When she had grown tired of speaking, they went to the place she rented further down the beach. She referred to it as a "hut" although it was much bigger and far more luxurious than the houses the locals lived in. There, he went down on her and fucked her on the bedroom floor. Afterwards, she wanted to talk some more. Which she did, until she fell asleep.

Rafi found himself soon thereafter sitting on the beach, awaking to the sound of the waves as if the night's encounter had been nothing but a bad dream. He let some sand run through his fingers and focused on the warmish feeling of it. During the day it was far too hot and burned your feet when you walked on it. But at night, the sand's temperature was perfect. Not cold, but heated enough to be pleasant to the touch.

To get rid of that invisible dirt he felt stuck to him like melted sugar, Rafi took of his clothes and submerged himself in the water. Then he got redressed and began to walk back home.

The streets were buzzling with life, even though it was the middle of the night. Almost all the shops, many of which turned into bars or brothels in the evening, were illuminated with the light of oil lamps. People of all sorts passed by him with the speed and force of a river. He was shoved here and there by elbows and hips and he felt himself like only a face in a stream of blank faces.

Still, Rafi couldn't get rid of the feeling that someone was following him. He stopped and looked around. A working girl winked at him. A little boy selling colourful bracelets held up some in the air to try and get his attention. But Rafi found nothing suspicious and he kept walking.

He turned at a corner and made his way down an empty street. The noise of the crowd became distant, like voices in a dream. After a while he became aware of the sound of echoing steps which weren't his own. He turned quickly, in hopes to catch his mysterious stalker in the act. No one was there.

Rafi was almost back home when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Startled, he jumped back and turned around in the same step. A cloaked figure was standing in front of him and from it came a sickening and sweet odour like that of rotting fruit.

"Rafinuematoko," it said in a nasal voice, "we need to talk."

## Chapter Two

Karsan would sometimes wonder if maybe it wasn't for the best to surrender to the enemy. Was a twenty percent tax on all income and a grain tax of fifty wagons every autumn really worth such bloodshed? But then he would think of his children and remember that it was about so much more than that.

If Karsan fought the Golden Empire's attempt to conquer his tribe, it wasn't out of a greedy wish to avoid inconvenient expenses. Rather, it was so that his sons as well as all his male subjects wouldn't be sent to their death in some conquering expedition on the whim of a tyrant whose appetite for power knew no bound. Karsan wished above all for them to remain free men and for that he was willing to fight the Empire to the edge of the world.

"Fuck these Empire cunts," he heard his oldest son Karzini say, "but they sure know how to make good armour."

The boy, who had recently survived his fifteenth winter, held up a chest piece and put an imperial helmet over his head. He lifted the visor and moved it up and down a couple of times, giggling like the child he still was as he did so.

"Maybe we should take some of those, they look like they're good protection for the head."

"I don't know," Karsan said and kicked restlessly the corpse of the imperial soldier Karzini had taken the helmet from. "You wouldn't want to get mistaken for one of these fuckers. Then you just might get killed by one of our own."

"Won't be of problem if we paint them. Maybe we could even draw the symbol of our tribe on it."

Karsan thought he heard children laughing behind him. He looked over the battlefield littered with the bodies of several hundred imperials and a handful of his own people. His men were in the process of searching the slain enemies for coins, weapons and other valuable things. But he saw no kids.

"Did you hear that?" He asked his son.

"Hear what?"

"Nothing. It was probably just the wind. You were saying, about those helmets?"

"Yeah, I thought we could decora..."

The boy stopped suddenly and stared with frightful, wide eyes at something behind his father. Hearing movement at his back, Karsan drew his sword and spun around. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that it was just an imperial who was not quite dead and trying to get back on his feet.

Karsan took a few steps, determined to put the poor bastard out of his misery, when he found himself in turn staring in disbelief. The enemy soldier was now standing on his feet, straight as a pole, but the top half of his head was missing, probably cut right off by a strong battle-axe.

"Praise be He," the man said with a strangely high-pitched voice.

"Praise be who?" Karsan asked.

"The Mighty, of course. Behold His power and tremble!"

As if the earth beneath their feet had reacted to the word tremble, it began to do just that. More of the dead ones stood up as if the movement had shaken them out of the slumber of death. They began to sing with childlike voices a song Karsan had never heard before and which was in a language also unknown to him.

"Karzini... Run!"

Father and son sprinted as fast as they could but did not get far before they ran into a wall of undead imperials. Beyond them, from all sides, they could hear the terrified shrieks of their tribal brothers. Karsan tried to cut through the crowd with his blade, but the soldiers seemed to feel nothing. Blood and limbs flew off them without even a blink from their dead eyes. And then, all at once, the imperials threw themselves on top of Karzan and his oldest son. Muffled out their dying screams under the mass of their putrid bodies.

The last rays of sunlight disappeared behind the hill. With the sky covered in heavy rain clouds, almost none of the brightness of the stars and moon could reach down. It was dark and damp, like the potato cellar Pakr's father used to lock him up in when he had been disobedient.

Beneath where he was standing on the rampart of the camp, was the infirmary. From there came a constant wailing from the injured and it brought back memories of men Pakr had seen die that day and many other days. These barbarians they were fighting may have been uncivilized but they were fearless and delighted in the spilling of blood. Ferocious animals is what they were, as Pakr saw it, and he wondered why the Emperor even gave them a chance to become part of their great nation. Had it been up to him, he would have just burned their villages to the ground, killed them all and filled their land with new and better habitants.

Perhaps because of the constant screams coming from the building, Pakr did not at first hear the strange sounds coming from up the hill. A strange mixture of gruntings and humming mixed together in an almost melodic way, it was unlike anything he had heard before.

"Do you hear that?" He said and exchanged a look with the soldier next to him.

The man nodded and took an arrow whose tip he dipped in a bucket of lamp oil. He then lit it on a torch and shot it out into the darkness of the hill. The flaming projectile illuminated very little in its path but it was enough for Pakr to see all that he needed. Braided beards. Decorated shields. The contour of a battle axe lifted to the sky.

"Barbarians!" He shouted and hurried to pick up the horn hanging from his belt and blowing into it.

Other watchmen all around the rampart followed his example and the call of their horns was soon accompanied by the noise of thousands of soldiers putting their armours back on and rushing out of their tents.

A similar metallic clamour was heard on the other side of the wall and Pakr prepared himself, sword in hand, for any attempts from the barbarians to climb up here. Any ladders or grappling hooks thrown against this part of the wall would quickly receive a kick from his foot and fall crashing to the ground below.

But this did not happen. What instead transpired could not have been foreseen by any sane person.

The enemy was now visible in the faint glow of the lanterns and to his surprise, Pakr saw that about half of them were dressed in imperial uniforms.

"Are you seeing this?" He said, turning to the soldier next to him.

"Yeah. It's probably to confuse us. They must have stolen them off the backs of our fallen. Damn barbarians."

Before they knew it, one of said barbarians was standing between them. He grinned with an empty smile at Pakr, who slashed him in the thigh. Slicing part of the muscle like it was a piece of ham. The savage was not bothered by this but kept smiling like a fool.

Meanwhile, more were appearing around them and Pakr saw many up in the air above them. That's when he realised they were leaping over the wall. An impossible feat without the use of some dark magic. He froze in horror and found himself unable to move even a finger.

Until the barbarian in front of him took a step forward. Then Pakr was overtaken by a determination to live, no matter what he had to do. He turned around and ran down the rampart stairs and into the inside of the camp, where the battle was already raging. With men on both sides wearing imperial uniforms, it was near impossible to distinguish friend from foe. But Pakr had no plans of attempting to.

He hurried into the latrines which were next to the infirmary and without hesitation jumped into one of the holes. A sordid mixture of shit and piss reached up to his chest. Some of it splashed into his mouth as he sank down, making him gag and almost choke on a piece of vomit in his throat.

Pakr swallowed it down. He stayed motionless, listening attentively to the commotion outside for what felt like all night but he knew wasn't. Because when the camp finally fell into an eerie silence, no daylight was yet coming in through the windows.

Just as he started to ponder whether or not he should get out and have a look at what had happened, the sound of footsteps made him think better of it. He continued to alter between breathing normally until he no longer could stand the smell of shit and breathing through his mouth until he no longer could stand the taste of it on his tongue.

Time passed and Pakr was on the verge of falling asleep when the door to the latrines suddenly flew open. Somebody walked in with decisive steps, went around the room and stopped in front of the hole Pakr had jumped into.

Being not completely under the opening but hiding a bit to the side, Pakr could not see the man's face but he could see enough to notice he was wearing an imperial troop leader's uniform.

"Boss!" He exclaimed and proceeded to try and climb out of the shithole.

Pakr nearly fell down again when he saw his leader more clearly. A large gash was on the side of his head, deep enough that it should have killed him but no blood was coming out of the wound. His left eye had been taken out with the injury and a whitish goo was oozing from where the eyeball had previously been. The other eye was staring blankly in front of him, as if he didn't even see Pakr.

"You must travel to the capital. Deliver a message to the Emperor."

Something about his voice sounded not quite right. It was too high-pitched with an almost childlike quality to it. And Pakr couldn't understand why such an honour of taking a message to the Emperor would be given to him, a soldier of the lowest rank.

"What happened out there? Did we wi..."

Pakr had not come to the end of his question before the boss's hands were around his neck, squeezing and lifting him up in the air. Desperately, he tried to kick and squirm but the leader would not let go of him.

"You must go to the capital," he repeated as Pakr was suffocating, "Deliver a message. It is urgent."

Things were becoming blurry around them and a cold shadow was falling over Pakr's consciousness. But before the dark took over, he saw through the open door of the latrines a figure. Wearing a black hooded robe and a metallic mask on which the moonlight reflected like ice, it was circled by two wolf-like creatures staring menacingly back at him.

One had grey fur and deep yellow eyes. Thick drops of blood-mixed saliva were dropping from its jaw. Large patches of its body were furless and revealing the greenish black hue of rotting flesh.

The other was entirely bones and all over as white as its fangs.

### *

A boy was walking down the beach. He was carrying a large leather sac and he had tied two pieces of smooth wood to the underside of his feet, probably as an improvised pair of shoes so that he wouldn't cut himself on one of the many pieces of broken glass left behind the night before by drunken tourists. This discarded glass wasn't worth a lot but still enough that some of the poorest of the city regularly picked it up to sell to a local factory, where it was melted and remodelled to make new bottles. These bottles were then filled with alcoholic beverages which were consumed by tourists and ended up once again on the beach in a continuous circle driven by local poverty and foreign stupidity.

The boy walked passed a pile of vomit, but not before poking through it with a stick to make sure it did not contain even the tiniest piece of precious glass. Fish bones, banana leaf plates, half-smoken ryda cigars and many other things made up the garbage scattered all down the previously so beautiful white sand beach. It hit Rafi, as he watched the boy who was only a bit younger than him, that someone at some point must have decided that filth would be the burden of men. Whether it was the job of gutting fish down at the port, emptying the public latrines or removing trash from the streets, it seemed men without ever questioning why took upon themselves to get dirty so that women wouldn't have to.

Rafi had no such noble feelings. Perhaps because he had felt enough disgust to last him a lifetime, he had promised himself that once he had done what needed to be done he would never again lower himself for anyone, man or woman.

There was movement in the bed behind him, so Rafi pulled the curtain back over the window and turned his attention to his client. She was still sound asleep after last night's fucking and, unlike what had been planned, still very much alive.

Rafi looked at the vial of poison the mysterious hooded man had given him. There had been plenty of opportunities the previous evening to slip its content into her drink but Rafi had not been able to make himself do it. Not so much because he didn't want to see her die, but because he couldn't stand the idea of her having a painless death.

It will be like she went to sleep, the man had said in his strange childlike voice, she won't need to suffer at all.

The deed still needed to be done. Rafi had already been paid and the last two thirds of his reward would be added when the job was finished. With the amount of gold waiting for him, he could move with his family far from this Spirit forsaken place of despair and poverty and start a whole new life full of freedom and abundance. Such an opportunity he could not have dreamt of even in his wildest dreams.

Emboldened with a new determination, Rafi walked out into the kitchen and poured some banana and pineapple juice into a glass. He emptied the vial's content into the mix before going back to the bedroom, where Duruka was waking up to the sun shining on her face through the small window above the bed. She smiled and took the drink he was offering her without giving a thanks, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that a poor black boy like him would be serving a wealthy Ilyian woman like her.

She proceeded to drink, slowly and without a sound the way women do. But in his mind the sips rang loud like a bell taunting him. He could see how she would soon fall asleep, refreshed and with the gentle rays of the morning sun shining on her face. She only got to down about half the juice before he slapped the glass out of her hands.

Duruka stared up at him with outrage but also fear written on her face. Sticky yellow juice had splattered on her naked body. It looked like a banana had cum on her tits, Rafi thought and had to repress a smile.

"Why did you do that for?" Duruka shouted.

Rafi wanted to answer but he couldn't find the words. They were as shielded from his mind by the dark cloud of his rage. He clasped his fists. Began to shake.

"Do you know how old I am?" Seeing the confused look on her face, he did not wait for an answer. "About fourteen cycles of seasons. I had been a girl, people would have seen you as a monster."

Duruka began to laugh. A light-hearted, mocking laughter. Rafi found himself hoping that she had drunk enough of the poison that it would kill her, but little enough that it would be slow and painful. He wanted so to see her suffer.

"Well, you aren't a girl? Aren't you?" She said and got up to get a towel to dry herself with. "People understand what you are. You men... you'd stick you dick in a donkey corpse if it was still warm. So don't pretend a beautiful woman like me didn't give you pleasure."

His hands were around her neck before he knew it. Squeezing so hard it looked like her eyes were going to pop right out. Slamming her head against the edge of the bedside table. One, two, three and four times until he heard a loud crack from her skull and she stopped kicking.

Rafi sat down next to the woman he had killed and gazed into her still wide-open eyes. She had died with an expression of dread on her face which sent a chill down his spine. He turned away and looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood from the wounds in her head, so he went into the kitchen and washed them in a pot of water. Afterwards, he put his clothes on and sneaked out the backdoor of the so-called hut and into the patch of forest behind it.

Rafi began to feel nauseous as he walked. He felt a strong disgust, not at what he had done but over how little it bothered him. And contrary to what he had expected, he felt no relief. Only an oppressive emptiness.

A strange sight made Rafi stop. It was a zaza. This particular species of snakes hated any kind of humidity and spent their lives out in the desert. There was no reason for it to be here, so close to the sea.

Rafi turned around to take a different path but as he did so almost stepped on another zaza. He sensed movement to his right and to his left. More snakes were appearing, from behind bushes and from under rocks. Slithering down trees.

"Did you do it?"

It was the hooded man, suddenly beside him as if out of nowhere.

"Yes," Rafi answered omitting the fact that he hadn't killed her the way they had agreed.

He kept his eyes on the snakes. The venom of a zaza was often fatal and one had no chance of surviving bites from multiple ones.

"Good," the man said and raised his arms slightly.

At once, all the zazas raised their bodies and began to hiss in a rhythmical, almost musical, fashion. Rafi fell on his behind from fear. He tried to get back up but found his legs were shaking too much. So, he turned to the man for some explanation, some help in this bizarre nightmare.

But the man was standing in the shadow of a tree. Always he kept himself in the darkness, where he could not properly be seen. All Rafi saw was the corner of his mouth raised in a twisted smile.

When the man put his arm down, all snakes leaped towards Rafi and bit him all over. Blood and brownish green venom poured from his wounds. The boy knew then that he would die. Nothing could be done for him and perhaps he deserved this end for what he had done. Only one thing did he want to know before he left this life.

"Why? I did what you wanted me to."

The man got on his knees and patted his head in an almost fatherly manner.

"Well," he said, "It's nothing personal. I just don't need you anymore. You have served my purpose and now... I discard you."

### *

His face was pleasant to look at but he wasn't exceptionally handsome. He had a body both lean and muscular, but there was nothing intimidating about his stature or the way he carried himself. In other words, he did not look like one would expect when hearing of the Red King.

Still, whenever Beyam saw him he felt this intense but pleasurable discomfort in the pit of his stomach. And then this breathlessness, like the man had stolen the air out of him. This pain and pleasure, Beyam felt it more strongly than ever before as he observed the object of his desire through a rip in his tent.

It was late morning and the King had just awoken. With sleepy eyes and a yawn, he got up and proceeded to make the bed. He wasn't wearing much, only an undershirt and a loincloth which exposed his hairy butt cheeks.

Beyam felt himself get hard. An urge to stick his hand down his pants came over him but he could barely move, almost paralyzed as he was by the most intense lust he had ever known.

The King was done with the bed so he began to change. First he took of the undershirt, revealing his muscular back and the thick hair on his shoulders. Then he started to undo the loincloth. Bent over in a pose which gave Beyam all sorts of shameful thoughts, he slowly removed it. But before Beyam could see the most private part of his backside, a flame burst up out of nowhere and shielded the King from his preying eyes.

"Your mother never told you it's rude to spy on people?"

Beyam would have made himself disappear through the earth, had he been able to. As he couldn't, he fled instead. Fighting back tears as he ran back to his tent, he cursed his own curiosity and these feelings for a man he could never be worthy of. The King would surely kick him out of the camp now and probably tell all the others what an awful person Beyam was. He would be thoroughly humiliated and, worse of all, would never again get to be near the King he loved so much.

Back in his tent, Beyam crawled into his sleeping bag and pulled a blanket over his head. He would stay here, he decided, until the King sent someone to throw him out of the camp. Right now, he couldn't bear to meet the eyes of the others.

The trumpet signalling the start of the day's practice sounded. Young men and a few young women gathered in the centre of the camp. Beyam could hear them laugh and talk as usual. Soon, he was now convinced, the King would pull him out of his tent and shame him in front of all of them.

But it wasn't the King who came to get him. It was Silvi, a girl from his native village and one of only four youn

gsters therefrom who had been picked to come to this camp and be taught by the King himself.

"Beyam! Where you at? Training's about to start." Impatient for an answer, she pulled the blanket off of him. "What's up? Are you sick?"

"No," he said sitting up and hoping she wouldn't notice that he had been crying.

"Hurry then!"

She went ahead without waiting for him and Beyam followed reluctantly. About twenty-five persons took part in the morning training. Most were already here, standing in a circle around the King, who was reading names from that notebook he always carried with him to his classes.

"Beyam?"

The young man froze when he heard his name. He tried to speak but could only get out an incomprehensible anxious noise when the King gazed into his eyes with that ice cold stare.

"Here," the King said and crossed something off in his notes. "Although, the crows seem to have stolen your tongue today."

The others chuckled, tearing down the last bit of pride Beyam had in him. To make matters worse, the first exercise of the day was archery. Beyam was skilled in the use of many weapons but he had never been able to master the art of the bow and arrows.

As expected, he did quite poorly. Worse than usual, even. It felt like the eyes of the King were burning marks of reproach in the back of his neck as he aimed. This put a light shiver in Beyam's fingers and he completely missed the target more than once.

The rest of the training went a bit better but Beyam still did not perform as well as usual. Shame made his breath feel short and his muscles weak so that he failed even at beating his opponent in a wooden sword fight, something which almost never happened. It was a great relief when midday came and with it lunchtime.

There were about fifty young people at the camp, but the King had decided that he would train one half in the morning and the other in the afternoon. This was so that he could get a better understanding of the skills and needs of each of his students and on this day he did not miss that one of them seemed a bit out of shape. As Beyam was sitting and eating with the forty-nine other students, the King came and sat next to him.

"Everything okay, Beyam?" He asked. "I couldn't help but notice you weren't very focused today."

If the King asks me this, Beyam thought, then he must surely not know I was the one spying on him this morning. This insight made the burden of his embarrassment lift from Beyam's shoulders and put him in a much cheerier mood.

"Oh, it's nothing. I just didn't get much sleep last night so I'm a bit tired."

"Ah, so nothing serious. Good. But if you have trouble sleeping again you should ask one of the cooks to make you an evening herbal drink. It'll help you fall asleep."

In front of him, the King had a bowl of bean and vegetable stew made especially for him. He didn't eat the same thing as the students at the camp because he never ate any meat. Many did not believe this and suspected that he snacked on steaks when nobody saw. How did he not wither away otherwise? But Beyam believed him. Once, he heard someone ask the King why he only ever ate plants. To that the King had said:

"I have seen enough death in my life, I don't need it on my plate."

A familiar sound was heard across the camp. It was the cry of the daya. Swiftly, a shadow passed over them and Rahin and her bird landed further down into the camp.

The King went to great her. They exchanged a hug and some words. It was too far away for Beyam to hear what they spoke of but he could see the expression of his King's face change from joy to an anxious seriousness. Rahin left to go to her tent and the King stood there, frowning and sunken into his own thoughts. He looked so worried that Beyam wished he could hold him and tell him everything would be okay, although he did not know exactly what was happening.

After lunch, he and all the other students found out the answer to that question. The King had one of his assistant go around and tell everyone to gather at the training square for an announcement.

"You are probably wondering why I have called you all here," The King began. "The reason is that I have received some troubling news. As of two days ago, the war between the Golden Empire and the Second Republic is back on. I think you all know what this means."

All present were old enough to remember the atrocities and the bloodshed of the last war. It was a dripping, pestilent wound which never quite left the hearts of those who had lived through it. In Beyam's memory there was to this day the indelible image of a mass grave stretching as far as the eye could see and in it the bodies of so many women, men and children.

"For those of you who are male and have lived over fourteen winters, or at least look like you have, this means soldiers will soon come to your towns and villages to draft you into the Imperial Army. As you are all needed for the coming war against the demon from beyond the mountain, we can't have that. So, although it was planned you would travel back home five days from now, you will stay here and continue training until it is time for us to strike against our enemy. Everything clear?"

"Yes, Red King!" All answered at once.

"Good. Afternoon training will start shortly. But first I want to talk to some of you in my tent. Beyam, Keevan, Silvi... Follow me."

The three youngsters obeyed and shared surprised looks, unsure if they should be flattered or worried. Inside the tent, the King turned to them and smiled, putting their minds to ease.

"I want you three to pack down your things and prepare to leave with me tomorrow morning. There is a special assignment waiting for you I know will fit you like a glove."

"Where are we going?" Silvi asked.

With a twinkle in his eyes and a corner of his mouth raised in a cheeky smile, the King said:

"You'll see. Oh, you'll see."

## Chapter Three

"We're here."

Silvi looked around but did not see it. They were far into a dark forest and a long way from any beaten path. She shared a glance with Keevan and Beyam but they were as confused as she was. Then the King uttered a series of incomprehensible syllables:

"Aï tori kunokaï. Abu toro yosiba!"

In front of them a large rock about the size of a dinner table faded away and disappeared, revealing underneath it a trapdoor.

"A security measure," the King explained. "So that only those who know can find it. Here takes these. And for the love of Spirit, don't take them off the whole time we're down there."

He handed the boys each a pendant made out of a small deep blue gem. When Silvi held out her hand to receive hers, the King shook his head.

"You don't need one."

He opened the trapdoor revealing an circular opening leading downwards. In the faint glow, Silvi could see metal rungs on the side. The King went ahead and climbed down.

"Follow me closely and don't go and get away on any side-paths, you'll get eaten."

"Eaten by what?" Keevan asked, showing only the slightest bit of worry.

The King did not answer and they followed him without words. They landed down in a tunnel. Silvi could now see where the light was coming from: torches hanged up on the walls.

"Take each one of these and light them up", the King said and pointed to a pile of torch wood on the floor.

They did as they were told, still without knowing where they were or why they had come here. On top of the King's head, his hair turned to flames to lighten his path. Silvi had heard of his amazing powers, her own aunt had witnessed his legendary Battle Against a Million Crows and loved talking about it, but this was the first time she saw with her own eyes the King using his magic.

Keevan was as fascinated, uttering a loud wow. Beyam just stared in admiration, his eyes burning with the kind of worship which made men run into death for the leader they loved.

The group went on toward their mysterious destination through the passages sometimes so narrow they had to squeeze themselves between the damp rock walls. Especially Keevan, who was freakishly large for his fifteen winters.

From time to time they would walk through larger spaces, where massive stalactites hanged threateningly over their heads. Along with the equally pointy stalagmites shooting up from the ground, they made one think of the mouth of some hungry and gigantic beast.

Soon they arrived at an underground lake on the edge of which a rowboat appeared when the King uttered yet another series of incomprehensible words. They got in and, with the King at the oars, began to make their way over the clear, turquoise water.

"How deep is it?" Beyam asked as he stared down into the seemingly bottomless lake.

"Don't know, nobody's ever been to the bottom. Nobody's been there alive, rather."

After passing through a series of smooth and obviously man-carved arches, they arrived at a shore behind which was a large open space. It was about the size of the Grand Arena of Ily and here the ground was so flat and the ceiling so free of stalactites that it also had to have been made this way by human hands. All the place was illuminated by a strong light whose source Silvi could not make out.

"Some ground rules," the King said. "Don't go in the water, don't touch things if you don't know what they are, don't go off wandering on your own and don't leave the village without my permission."

"The village?"

The King looked back at them with a surprised look on his face. Then he had a sudden realisation.

"Oh, right. You guys can't see it."

He uttered another one of his spells and, as if out of nowhere, many little huts appeared. Between them people were walking, hundreds of them going about their day. The sound of their voices suddenly filling the previously so silent cave. With a smile, the King turned to them again.

"Kids... welcome to Mage City."

### *

"Help! Somebody help!"

Djeen got a bad feeling when he heard the woman's screams. The fact that they came from near the hut he shared with the kids did nothing to ease his worry. He ran back in his tracks, tried his best not to but almost knocked a couple of people over. When he turned the corner, he saw a small crowd standing in a circle, staring at something in their midst. Although he was the King, he still had to elbow his way past them.

"What happened?" He asked and realised himself the answer to that question when he saw Keevan lying on the ground.

"I don't know," the woman kneeling beside him said. "I just saw him collapse to the ground."

Djeen searched Keevan's pockets. Finding them empty, he opened the boy's closed fist and found what he was looking for: the blue pendant. Quickly, he put it back around Keevan's neck. It didn't take long before he came to again.

"What did I tell you?" Djeen said, shook the kid with one hand and with the other waved the blue rock in front of his face. "This thing protects those who have no magic from being crushed by this place. Take it off for too long and you'll die. Why did you remove it?"

"I... People kept staring at it, it made me uncomfortable." He answered blushing with shame.

"Then hide it inside of your shirt, you dumbass."

The crowd started to dissipate when Djeen looked up, as if they feared flames would burst out his scorning eyes. He grabbed Keevan's arm and pulled him up.

"Silvi and Beyam, where are they?"

"Oh, they went for a walk."

The boy rubbed his neck nervously and Djeen got the feeling there was something he wasn't telling him.

"Not outside the village, I hope?"

Keevan nodded, dared for a instant to meet Djeen's eyes and blushed.

"Oh, for Spirit's sake! Follow me. And bring your sword!"

Djeen called on one of the many lanterns floating around Mage City, forgetting in his hurry that he could make flames appear anywhere on his body at any time. They ran in the direction Keevan said the other two had disappeared and Djeen wondered which one of them had had the brilliant idea of wandering further into the cave. It wouldn't surprise him if it turned out to be Silvi as she was the more ballsy of the two. Although, Beyam also had a tendency to do things he shouldn't. Such as spying on a king in his tent...

When they arrived at a spot where the paths diverged, Djeen stopped to ponder which way he would take had he still been a mischievous youth looking for adventure. He was about to walk down the darker, more dangerous looking one when he thought he heard a scream coming from the other.

With one arm, he picked up Keevan and put him over his shoulder. He pulled his sword and ran towards the sound. In an instant, he was in the spider's lair, where Beyam and Silvi where wrapped in spider silk and trapped in the beast's gigantic web.

The spider looked up with an expression of surprise in its numerous eyes. It was in the process of eating Silvi's long auburn locks, as human hair was a delicacy to its species. The poor girl's face was grotesquely swollen and her cheeks streaked with tears. Djeen felt a pang of sympathy but also a certain satisfaction over knowing that she had definitely learned her lesson.

He dropped Keevan on the floor and the boy with once rolled over and puked, his body still dealing with having experienced speed not natural to most humans. Djeen then moved quickly, destroyed the spider's web and cut the two kids out of it with slashes of his sword.

The animal came towards him, shrieking and furious to see both its home and its lunch ruined by some puny human. Had he been any other person, the sigh of this thing towering over him would have paralyzed him in fear. Like most of what lived down here, it was white and had bright red eyes which glowed like ambers when in darkness. It had twelve legs instead of the eight found in most spiders and their ends were as sharp as razors. Having this creature step on you even once was enough to rip out all your guts.

But Djeen felt no fear. He pointed the tip of his sword towards the beast, as if daring it to come closer. When making fire dance on his head and blade weren't enough to scare the thing away, he let out one loud, short shout which startled the spider enough to make it jump up and hit its head on the ceiling. Beaten, it retracted to a corner of its lair and huddled like a scorned puppy.

Djeen picked up Beyam and Silvi and lay them on his shoulders. Keevan hurried after with wobbly steps and vomit all over his clothes.

"You guys are in big trouble!" Djeen said so that his voice thundered between the cave walls. "All three of you!"

### *

Rahin hesitated an instant before she banged on the door. Djeen had seemed on edge ever since he had arrived to Mage City and the morning's misadventures, when two of his students had nearly been devoured by a giant spider, had done nothing to ease his mood.

"Djeen?" She said and knocked twice softly.

"Come in."

She found him sitting on the edge of his bed, polishing some weapons which didn't look like they needed it. As he often did when he was restless with nothing to do.

"What's this I'm hearing about you sending the students back home?"

"These kids," Djeen said and sighed, "can't even follow the most basic orders. It was a mistake bringing them here."

"You can send the boys away if you want. I don't even know why you brought them along. But we need the girl, you know that."

"A grown man in power, taking a poor young girl with him on a secret journey... That doesn't look good. And rumour travel fast. I want my people to be able to trust me. That's why I brought the boys too. Plus, they're both excellent fighters but with completely different styles. I thought they could help you test the weapons you're developing down here."

"I think your people know you have no interest in any of their girls, young or not." At his perturbed expression, she shrugged and smiled. "The truth also is something which travels fast."

He put aside the lance tip he had been working on and looked up at his friend with a tired expression on his face.

"So, the girl. Are you sure?"

"I am. I just don't know how yet."

Djeen nodded, picked up another weapon from the pile next to him and restarted what he had been doing when she had come in.

"Well," he said, "if you are sure then I trust you. But it can't send the boys away if I let Silvi stay. It wouldn't fair to only punish two out of three."

"Oh, but there are plenty of punishments they can be given right here. Many latrines which need emptying and shitworms which need feeding."

He chuckled and it felt good to see him smile. So many seasons had passed since his battle with the crows and all this time there had been no sign of The Mighty. Sure, there were stories. The bodies of fallen soldiers disappearing by the thousands, slaughtered animals coming back to life and trampling their butchers to death, whole cemeteries rising and the dead walking away with their tombstones on their backs... But apart from that there was only this to Djeen soul crushing wait. Which was as well, as they were not anywhere near ready for war.

After her talk with Djeen, Rahin felt an urge to go to a silent place and listen to the flow of Spirit. Perhaps it would have answers waiting for her. It wasn't something which could be rushed either way but she needed to reconnect with the Source, the eternal Flow that gave the world its energy.

Hungry for sunlight, she decided to leave the underground. To her delight, it was a beautiful day outside and she went to climb her favourite tree: a large oak from which she could see the green sunny valley spread at all sides.

She sat down on the highest branch and took in the view for a while, until she felt time had come to sit and listen. Leaning her back against the trunk, she closed her eyes, breathed and waited.

A vision came. It was a familiar one: Djeen was standing on the edge of a cliff and beside him was the girl, Silvi. They were looking down at a large road where a seemingly never-ending line of soldiers was marching. Rahin could hear the sound of their stomping feet, all in perfect harmony, not a step out of line.

All at once, the men turned their heads towards her and she could see that they had no faces. This was something new to the vision. She didn't understand what it meant but it came with a strong feeling of nausea and a sharp pain against her temples.

On the verge of tears, she turned her head away and was prepared to let go of the vision when she noticed the soldiers' uniforms. About every other man was not wearing the scarlet one of the Red Assembly, but one shiny and golden like wheat in the sun. And just like that, Rahin knew what they had to do.

### *

Much had changed since the last time Djeen had set foot in Ily, over ten winters ago. Not only was it a city split in two, but much of its way of life and values had shifted. Most notably was that non-Ilyians had been given full citizenship. As long as they weren't born slaves, of course.

With the Emperor himself born further north in what used to be the Republic, to continue seeing all from outside the city as less than human would have been unbearable to the proud Ilyians. After all, who wishes to be governed by an animal? And, unwilling as they were to recognize their past mistakes, they went along pretending things had always been this way.

When the war had first broken out, the leader of the Golden Lions had been Petr Giliaz, son of Pio Giliaz. But when he had fallen in battle, his second-in-command had taken over and when the Lions had conquered half the Republic, he had declared himself Golden Emperor and Son of Heaven.

His face was now visible on all the public statues around town and above all on the giant engraving on the facade of the Imperial Palace, his golden locks and face shining over the city like a sun. Djeen was standing in front of this impressive building, built on top of an artificially created hill, and gazed over the city as he imagined the Emperor liked to do. How many lived down there? At least a million. Another million on the other side of the Great Divide. So many people in the palm of his hand...

Djeen turned away and walked up the stairs to the Palace's entrance. There were about ten soldiers guarding it. Two came towards him and demanded to know who he was. Not in a mood to explain himself, he kept on going and caught their blades in his hands when they tried to attack him. He melted the metal and threw it behind him like he was swishing away some annoying flies.

To avoid any more confrontations, he made flames rise around him like a shield. Soldiers still tried to get to him but only hurt themselves. Several projectiles were thrown at him, arrows and lances, but they fell to ashes before they could even touch him. Without any hindrance, he was soon in front of the golden doors leading to that part of the Palace called the Emperor's Hall.

Four female soldiers were guarding them. On their bodies were what by some might have been called armour, but as it covered no important places and left very little to the imagination, it was obvious that they were not for the women's protection but for the delight of the Emperor. Djeen shook his head, wondering not for the first or last time what it was about this soft and blubbery thing called the female body that so aroused the average man.

He threw a ball of fire at the doors, which melted in an instant. The guards ran away in fear and he stepped into the Hall, where the Emperor was sitting on his golden throne and conversing with a group of his generals. The ruler locked eyes with the man who had dared interrupt his meeting. And they both laughed.

Confused and a bit frightened, the generals shared looks and shrugs as the Emperor dried tears of laugher from his eyes.

"Oh, Djeen! I knew it was you. I still remember when your face was on all the news posters after you killed all those soldiers. Come here 'Fire Demon', 'Red King'. Let me take a look at you."

Djeen obeyed, baffled to see sitting on the throne the boy with whom he had first come to Ily, all these summers ago.

"Yes, that was me. You, on the other hand, don't look quite like the man on the coin."

"A security measure. The fewer people know my true face, the better."

The Emperor stood up from his throne and went to embrace his old friend. A flood of memories came back to Djeen as he felt the other man's arms around him. He recalled the affection he had felt for the young man and how he had dreamt so often of running his fingers through the wavy blond hair enshrining his face like a lion's mane.

"What brings you here?" The Emperor asked, his hands gripping Djeen's shoulders in a manner both affectionate and a bit domineering. "Tell me everything."

"As you can guess, I wouldn't reveal myself unless it was of the outmost importance. I came to warn you of a threat to the nation. But I need to speak to you alone."

The Emperor ordered his generals to leave the room. There were some objections. Surely, this had to be a trap. A threat from the Emperor involving pikes and their heads made them quiet their protests and the two men were left alone in the Hall.

Djeen proceeded to tell the Emperor about everything. The Mighty, the Redeemed, the land of snow beyond the mountains, the Shadow Kingdom he had built for himself in preparation for the coming war... Djeen told him about it all. A terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach told him this was a mistake, that nothing good could come out of the Emperor knowing all this. But in his heart and mind, Djeen trusted Rahin. If she believed this was the way to go, then he would walk this road.

When he was done, the Emperor rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger like he was trying to make sense of some confusing dream.

"Tell me, Djeen, are you fucking with me or are you just stark raving mad?"

"I wish it was either of those, but I'm telling the truth. Besides, why would I make up such a story?"

"Oh, I don't know... Maybe because you just told me you need to use my army. How do I know you wouldn't use it to overthrow me? Expend your Kingdom and take over my Empire?"

"Well for one," Djeen said hurt, "we are friends and I wouldn't do that to a friend."

"Power has no friends, Djeen. Either way my answer is no. You may not have noticed but I'm in the middle of a war here and I need all the manpower I can get."

A passing expression of sadness came over the Emperor's otherwise cold face. Maybe there was something Djeen could use to change his mind.

"I have heard of what happened to your cousin Duruka, that she was murdered while vacationing in the Second Republic. You have my condolences."

"Thank you. If you have heard of it, you must also know that her assassin was paid by a senator of the Republic."

"Yes. If what I've been told is true, he was bitten by a snake shortly after killing her and written instructions to the assassination were found on his body. But have you thought that maybe that's a bit too convenient?" Seeing the sudden anger on his friend's face, Djeen turned his hand and added: "That maybe someone wanted you to think the Republic was responsible for her death so that the war would start again?"

"Like who?"

"Like someone who needs a lot of dead soldiers. Many of your troops have disappeared, haven't they? And the bodies of many fallen have done the same?"

The Emperor laughed, rolled his eyes. Seeing him restless on his golden throne, Djeen felt more than ever that coming here had been a mistake.

"Your sorcerer from beyond the mountains no one has ever crossed? Tell me, Red King, can you prove any of this?"

"Not yet."

A look of triumph on the Emperor's face made Djeen realise just how pathetic he sounded. The ruler of the Empire sat back in his throne and laughed cruelly.

"Then get the fuck out of my face."

### *

"This is a disaster."

Rahin was observing the three youngsters through her hut window as they were in the process of emptying the contents of the latrines into one of the shitworms' mangers. These white creatures, about the size of a forearm, lived down in these dark caves and while she and the other sorcerers had been building Mage City, they had discovered that the pale worms had a fondness for human excrements. And that the critters tasted like sweet chicken sausage.

"But the vision is still going to pass, right? It's not like Spirit can be wrong. We'll still get imperial soldiers on our side one way or another."

"I don't know, Djeen. It could have been symbolic somehow. Maybe I got this all wrong. If only I could figure out how she fits into all this."

She pointed at Silvi, who was in the middle of a fit of laugher at Keevan jumping up in the air after one of the shitworms had rubbed up against his leg. They were affectionate little buggers, these slimy things. It made Rahin almost feel bad for eating them.

"Maybe we should just ask her."

Rahin scoffed at her friend's words but then considered them. Could it really be that simple? The girl had magic, she had sensed it. Perhaps she had been wrong in assuming Silvi was not aware of it herself simply because she did not show it. While Spirit gifts were considered a gift by many, they still made one different and standing out from the crowd was something most avoided like the plague. Rahin often forgot about that, perhaps because she herself stood out so much without even trying.

"Fine," she said. "But I'll talk to her alone. I have a feeling she'll be more comfortable opening up to another woman."

So it was decided and Rahin began to look for an opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with the girl Silvi. It presented itself one morning in the Mage City kitchen. Rahin was peeling vegetables while Silvi was preparing the shitworms. She would hit them over the head with the handle of the knife, cut them open with one slash, pull out their insides with her other hand and throw the gutted worm into a bucket for later frying. This she did in such a fast and constant manner that she created an almost musical rhythm in the process.

"So, how do you like Mage City?" Rahin tried as a conversation starter.

"It's alright. Although I still don't know why I'm here."

"What did the King say?"

"Nothing. He gave the boys the task of trying out some new weapons being developed. But me, I've just been feeding and gutting worms."

Silvi did not look up or interrupt her work as she spoke and the expression that Rahin had previously interpreted as focused concentration became even more stern. The girl was unhappy.

"Actually," Rahin confessed, "he brought you along because I asked him to."

Silvi stopped her motion in the middle of cutting up a worm and looked at her with surprise, and not anger like Rahin had expected.

"Why?"

"Well, this is Mage City and you do have some... interesting powers."

With a blank expression on her face but dread in her eyes, Silvi grabbed a broom and began to sweep away the worm guts littering the floor. Rahin couldn't help but notice that the girl was shaking.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do." She went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Truth is, we could use your help. You have an amazing gift."

"Gift, my ass," Silvi scoffed and pushed her hand away. "It's evil, that's what it is."

"No power or abilities are in themselves inherently evil. Only what you choose to do with them," Rahin repeated the words she had told Djeen all those seasons ago.

"Oh, give me a break! What good could possibly come out of using such a power?"

In a rage, Silvi threw the broom on the ground. She wiped tears from her eyes and Rahin knew to choose her words carefully.

"Look, I... Let me explain the situation: we don't have a big enough army. If The Mighty was to strike today, we wouldn't stand a chance. Even with all our special weapons and our magic. The land would be doomed. Our only chance is to somehow take control of another army. Like the imperial one."

The girl, sitting on the floor with her face in her hands, chuckled bitterly.

"A whole army? You want me to do it to a whole army?" She looked up at Rahin with swollen eyes. "I don't even know if that's possible. I've never done it to more than a handful of guys at a time."

"Well," the sorceress said and sat down next to Silvi. Put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "You can't know unless you try. And look, I know you didn't choose your abilities and you'd probably get rid of them if you could. But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to turn a curse into a blessing, not just for you but for all the known world."

Tears continued to stream down Silvi's cheeks but she didn't bother with wiping them away, as if she was too exhausted after fighting the magic in herself for too long.

"You really think so?"

"I know so."

"Okay. I'll try then."

Rahin smiled to try and ease the girl's worry, and to mask the doubt she felt over whether she had just made a terrible mistake.

### *

"So, what is it she does exactly?"

"I have no idea," Rahin said and avoided Djeen's shocked and inquisitive stare. "But she thinks we do, so just play along."

She whispered the last words as she saw Silvi come back from the patch of forest she had gone into to urinate. They picked up their bags and continued on their way to Camp Willow, nicknamed thus due to being near a wood rich in weeping willows.

It was midday when they arrived. Djeen wiped the sweat from his brow and ignored the call from the guard on the rampart demanding to know who they were.

"So, how do you do this?" He asked turning to Silvi.

"I need to be somewhere they can all hear me."

"That's doable. Are you ready?"

She nodded, swallowed nervously. Djeen grabbed both women and put them over his shoulders. Rahin let out an indignant hey! and kicked him softly in the gut to let him know she didn't appreciate the surprise.

He jumped up on the rampart, kicked the guard standing above the gate as he landed. Shouts and arrows came towards them. By throwing balls of fire, he destroyed the latter. After putting the women down, he ordered Silvi to do her thing.

A sound like a humming came out of her. First low, like one whispers a lullaby to a child. Then higher and higher until it was a vibration echoing over all the camp. Men stopped, put down their weapons and gazed at her. Others peaked out of their tents, their heads sticking out through the flaps as they stared transfixed by the beauty of the melody coming out of the girl only eighteen winters old.

She began to sing a traditional song from the woodlands of the middle of the Empire:

"You are most precious to me, my love. No man has your beauty, your chiselled jaw, your blinding smile that sends my heart beating like a drum. In your eyes is all the world and in your arms you'll show me it all. You are most precious to me, my love. No other man to you can compare."

Here and there, a few men seemed unaffected by her song. About one in ten, Djeen estimated. They stared around at their hypnotized fellow soldiers and were unsure what to do. A lone one rushed towards the rampart with his sword raised high, but Djeen made flames appeared in front of his feet and made him stop in his tracks.

"On some men it doesn't work," Silvi explained. "I don't know why."

"How did you know it wouldn't affect me?"

"I figure you wouldn't have asked me to do it if it could," she said shrugging. "Also, you're the King. Nothing can touch you."

Djeen looked down at the unchanged men and smiled. He had a feeling as to why the spell had not worked on them or him and it hadn't to do with being immune to magic, which he certainly wasn't.

"Now you control them?" Rahin asked and nodded towards the approximately two thousand men staring up at Silvi.

As a response, the young woman ordered them to touch their noses, which they all did.

"Amazing," Rahin said impressed. "How long does the effect last?"

"Wait," Silvi said and stared up at her with a horrified expression. "You mean you didn't know? It doesn't wear off. Ever!"

### *

"How? How?!"

Viktr startled as the Emperor threw down a decorative vase in anger. Never had he seen him like this. It was well-known that the ruler of the Empire had quite the temper but this was something else. The man's face was bright red, dripping with sweat, and he continuously pulled chunks of hair out of his own scalp. Learning that the Red King had been stealing men from his army had sent him over the edge.

"It seems he has a sorceress with him," one of his generals explained apologetically. "A young woman who enchants men with her voice."

Had it been any other patient, Viktr would have tried to calm him down by holding him, maybe forcing him to sit. But you just didn't put a hand, even a friendly one, on the Emperor, least you wanted to perish. So, the doctor kept himself aside, holding in his hand the calming tea he hoped the patient would eventually accept.

Viktr turned his head towards the wall-sized window facing the city and asked himself if he missed the days of the Old Republic. He couldn't find he did or that he had felt much of anything since he had lost her all those autumns ago.

A large shadow suddenly came towards the window. Viktr had just the time to make out what it was before the daya and the man riding it crashed through.

Pieces of glass flew across the room, cut Vikr's arm as he raised it to protect his face. One of the generals got a shard in his eye and cried out in pain.

"Who are you?" The Emperor demanded to know.

The stranger lowered his hood and revealed his youthful but ashen grey face.

"I am The Messenger," he said and flashed them a bloody smile.

## Chapter Four

The first time it had happened had been two summers ago, when Silvi and a group of friends had been having a picnic in the forest. One of the boys had brought his flute and was playing a happy tune which had inspired the girls to dance and hum along.

Something strange had then happened to the boys. They had stopped everything they were doing and had stared in front of them with empty eyes. Even the boy who was playing became as paralyzed and let his instrument fall to the ground.

At first the girls had believed the boys were pulling a prank on them, as they loved to do. But when they had realized the seriousness of the situation, they had run back to the village to get help.

The boys were taken back home, carried on stretchers as they would not move, and their families had tried everything to cure them. To no avail. Seven days later, all boys had died from ingesting no food or water.

Two similar tragic enchantments would happen before Silvi, and the other villagers, figured out that she was the cause of it. Thinking she was doing it on purpose, they had tried to kill her and her family had to escape to another part of the Empire.

Silvi vowed that she would never again sing and for the most part, she had kept that promise. There had been a few instances when she carelessly had hummed a tune when she believed herself to be alone. Including one instance when she had inadvertently charmed a neighbour's son.

Thankfully, no one in their new village ever figured out she was the reason for the young man's mysterious ailment and through interacting with him she had realised that he would follow her orders whenever she tried to make him do something. By telling him to eat three times a day, drink five glasses of water of day, sleep when it was night and us the chamber pot whenever he needed to, she had saved his life. He now still lived with his parents and went every day through the same routine she had once created for him.

"We can't do this, Rahin!"

"We don't have a choice!"

The King and his friend were still arguing, as they had been for days. Discovering what Silvi's true power was, after tricking her into thinking they already knew, had shocked them to the core – and divided them on the matter of whether or not it would be right to use it.

"If we do this, how are we any better than The Mighty? We'd be emptying people of their souls and using their bodies like tools for our own goals."

"Yes, our goal of stopping the enemy from killing every living being in the entire world! In the grand scheme, doing this, I agree, awful thing to a minority of people is the lesser of two evils."

Not able to stand any more of their debating, Silvi stood up from sitting in front of the hut and went on a walk around Mage City. As every day since her secret had come out, people cast fearful eyes at her when she passed by. Men especially avoided her, hurrying into huts or side-streets when they saw her approaching.

A woman put her hands over the ears of a young boy, likely her son, and stared at her with hate and fear. Silvi wished she had anywhere to go. Leaving the city was too risky and back at the hut she had to put up with the incessant arguing of Rahin and the King.

Even one person to talk to would have brought comfort to her soul. But now even Keevan and Beyam avoided her for fear that she would drain them of themselves. They refused so much as to sleep in the same room, fearing that she would sing in her sleep.

"Message for the King! Coming through!"

A man was stepping out of a rowboat on the shore of the lake. His face was flushed, his breathing short, and he was waving a scroll above his head. Grateful for a distraction to take her mind off things, Silvi followed him from a distance as he ran to the King's hut and knocked.

"What?!" The King roared as he flung the door open.

Seeing the scroll, he took it from the messenger's hand and opened it. As he was reading, his face turned pale and she thought she could see tears form in his eyes.

"Thank you," he said in an almost whispering voice and began to close the door between them.

He noticed Silvi standing there and waved to her to follow him. Well inside, he locked the door and turned to her.

"It seems Rahin may be right after all," he said in a voice heavy with bitter resignation. "We won't have a choice but to use your powers."

"What happened?" Rahin asked.

She sounded disappointed. In the end, they had all wished there was a way around using Silvi's terrible gift.

"It's The Mighty. He's taken the capital."

### *

"Are we there yet?"

Rik rolled his eyes and thought for a second of ignoring Teok's persistent question. But worried it would lead to another tirade, he replied.

"Like I said before: we probably won't be there till after sundown. So quit your whining!"

He had planned to stay as polite as possible but had found himself far too irritated halfway through speaking. Teok's reaction was as expected.

"Who do you think you are?" He said, stomping his foot like a petulant child. "Do I need to remind you who I am?"

"Well," Rik responded and having lost his patience grabbed the other man by the collar, "as of yesterday, you're nobody. Nothing, just like the rest of us. And need I remind you that I could have easily left you to rot in that cell without risking my life to break you out? So how about you show some respect, you little shit?"

Teok nodded zealously, his eyes wide like a frightened cat and Rik felt a satisfaction at seeing his fear. Not for long.

"How'd you do it?"

The words felt like a cascade of cold water crashing over him. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was the one he heard every night in his nightmares.

Rik let go of Teok and turned around, hoping that it would reveal that it was all just another bad dream. But there he was: the Red King.

Any other person who had wronged him, Rik could have killed swiftly with his blade. To this thing, this fire demon, he could do nothing. This knowledge put a terror in him which made his whole being freeze like a pillar of ice.

"You fucking cunt!"

Teok rushed to the King, punched him in the stomach and face. Rabid with hatred, he hit him repeatedly but to no avail. The King did not budge or even blink.

"You done?" He asked calmly, like one does to a toddler throwing a tantrum.

"You did this! It was you! I wouldn't give it to you so you just took it!"

Teok struck him one last time on the nose and took a step back, panting with exhaustion. To think, once he had been a great warrior. But the upper-class life had turned him pathetically out of shape.

"Who's that?"

A woman's voice. Rik had been so shocked to see the person he hated the most in this world that he hadn't noticed the beautiful thing beside him. Quite the fine piece of ass she was too. One Rik wouldn't have minded taking a bite of. Had he still been able...

"That's the Emperor," the King explained. "Or was rather."

"He doesn't look like an Emperor." She stared Teok up and down as he stood there, huffing and puffing in his poor man's clothes. "Not handsome enough."

"Fuck you, bitch! What do you even know?"

"Hey," the Kind said and put a strong, controlling arm around the former ruler's shoulders. "Be nice. This is Silvi. She's the one who is going to get you back your Empire."

### *

When the Lead Senator of the Second Republic had been awoken in the middle of the night by screams and explosions, he had felt a strange sense of relief. The war had been once again raging all along the border to the Golden Empire, except for within the capital. It had only been a matter of time before the power-hungry Emperor would have tried to lay all of Ily under his control. Heated debates had taken place at the Senate over whether or not it was best to strike first or if a good defence was the best offence but an agreement could never be reached. With the Empire attacking first, the unbearable wait for the inevitable had finally been over.

Except, it wasn't the Empire which had attacked. What it was, he had not the slightest idea.

"Your many ages of unrighteousness have come to an end. Oh, hear the words of The Mighty and tremble, oh nations! Kneel before Him, oh kings and proud queens, for He has come to judge all! The blood of the unjust ones will flow like..."

The Senator shook his head and tried to shut out the ranting voice of the madman, the one who called himself The Messenger, who was standing on top of The Great Divide and preaching to the crowds on both sides while his soldiers took it down brick by brick.

Most bizarre of all was that the people seemed to welcome this mysterious new ruler. Not a hair on any civilians' head had been touched when The Messenger and his army had come from the sky and taken over the city. That alone had earned them respect from the populace. And then there were the hundreds of preachers he had brought with him and who preached day and night about a just new world where love would rule and there would be bread for all.

The Senator looked down at his tied hands, then at the crowd of people cheering as the wall slowly came down. The Great War had torn apart not only a nation and a city but it had also separated friends and families caught on different sides of The Great Divide. Hence why tears of joy were now streaming down many faces.

Whoever in the end took the power away from The Messenger, one of the obstacles they would face would be a people full of gratitude towards one they perceived as a liberator.

As for the former Senator, he would not be there to see it. Per order of The Messenger, he and all senators would be hanged at sundown.

### *

"Are you sad about your friend?"

Silvi's question was innocent and sweet, much like her face. She was referring to Rik, who had left earlier that day without a word the village where they were staying.

"Oh, no. He wasn't really my friend, truth be told. I don't know why he risked his life to save me."

"Maybe he knew you were a great leader and wanted you to take back your throne."

"I thought I didn't look like an emperor."

"I was just teasing," Silvi said and shrugged.

She came closer to him, leaned on the same tree trunk as he was and cocked her head to the side, like a puppy.

"He's telling the truth, you know. The King. He had nothing to do with what happened to the capital."

Teok had not been so sure of it. He didn't trust Djeen, did not understand what he was or his motives. But as he gazed into the girl's eyes and saw her full lips curl into a shy smile, he could not believe lies would come out of someone so lovely.

"I know. Where is he by the way, the King?"

### *

A blue flicker. Here an instant, gone the next. Pitch black darkness. A silver flash rushed by, caressed his cheek with a sting of pain. Voices were humming, hands beating the stretched skins of drums. Djeen stomped his naked feet on the ground, felt the dust rise and dance around them. Vibrations from the earth tickled his soles and he knew he was connected to Spirit and to the All, the pulsating stream that is the world.

"Spreading his evil across the land, he has come to slaughter all, but call on the light and all his demons shall fall."

Rahin's voice. It felt wrong at first, like intruding on an intimate conversation between friends. But he swiftly accepted her, reminded as he was by Spirit that she too was part of the All, came from it and one day will return to it, just like him.

As usual during the ritual, she wasn't wearing much. A short draped skirt hanged loosely around her hips. A wraparound top covered her slim torso, leaving her long arms naked. Djeen found himself mesmerized by the rhythmical dance of her limbs. More even than usual, perhaps because he knew the importance of the time. Tomorrow, the war they had been waiting for would begin.

New flashes of blue and silver rose around them as the beating of the drums grew faster. Whispering voices from the men playing repeated in unison the spell Rahin had uttered and which had been passed down to her from her father. The blue and the silver became a flame and rose up between the two friends.

In the light it cast, Djeen could see Rahin's face. Her eyes were shut, her brows frowning as if she was in pain or deeply focused. She raised her arms above her head, moved her wrists in a fashion which made it seemed there were doing so on their own, like strands of grass in the wind. The flames followed their rhythm, danced along with their motion.

Suddenly, she jumped up in the air and swung her arms forward, toward the open trench in front of them. The fire followed her orders and engulfed the weapons in it. Sword blades, axe heads, the tip of arrows and lances began to glow with a light so strong the blue nearly turned into white.

Flames spread along the trench, continued where it diverged into different paths and soon the mountainside was covered in what reminded Djeen of the pulsating veins of an erect cock.

Rahin bent down and picked a weapon, a chakram whose sharp edges spread a blue light across her face as she twirled it around her finger.

"So it begins."

### *

The sound of his lower robe sliding across the floor of the palace hallway was all that was heard. It was night and the city, like its people, was sound asleep. The Mighty stopped in front of a colourful mural depicting a scene from the former Emperor's life. A young man with bulging muscles and wavy blond hair flowing in the wind was holding up the heart of a lion he had just killed. In the background, the beast was lying dead. Its red tongue hanging out like it was trying to make a grimace.

The Mighty laughed. As most of the lore around the Golden Emperor, this story was likely fictional. In reality, he was only a man. Weak and imperfect, not nearly good enough to bring on an Age of Perfection. Disgustingly imperfect, was he. Like The Mighty once had been.

But had he really? When the god thought back on Ezlen, the man felt like another person entirely. A parasite would be a better way to describe him, an unwanted twin whom he had after much struggle rid himself of. One who had not gone down without a fight.

The Mighty could still recall the hands that had once been his forging that cursed sword in the flames of a volcano. He remembered the same hands giving the finished weapon to a carrier eagle to fly it away to a place where his brother, his long lost friend who had tried so desperately to save him, would find it. In the few and far between moments when Ezlen had been free and clear in his thoughts, he had poured his whole self into plotting The Mighty's demise. With a lot of help from Spirit.

Still, Truth and Perfection had triumphed. Ezlen had perished and The Mighty prevailed. He had become what he needed to be to crush all that was wrong with the world and to bring an end to all suffering.

Only one obstacle remained in his way. Two, rather. A man who thought himself to be a woman and another who wielded the only weapon that could destroy The Mighty's plans. Luckily, he knew how to defeat them both.

### *

A sharp pain pierced through her leg and Rahin fell to the ground. She looked down, saw the head of an arrow coming out the front of her knee. The sight of dark blood flowing from the wound and of a big shard of white bone cutting through her skin would have made her nauseous, had it not been for the excitement of being in battle.

She quickly rolled away from the axe coming down at her. The Redeemed behind it staggered forward from the momentum and, jumping up on her one good leg, she plunged a dagger in the back of its neck. With once, the creature disappeared in a cloud of blue ashes.

Something lifted her up in the air but she felt no surprise or fear. The claws of the daya bird trained to carry away the injured felt comforting around her arms and she knew she would be okay. At least for now.

Below, the war raged on without her. Just a few days ago, they had been planning their strategy to take back the capital. But before they could attack, reports had come from the north that an army of the dead was coming out of the Wind Mountains. Then similar accounts had come from all over. Whether they were falling from the sky, coming out of forest lands or rising from the sand of the Toyanese desert, the deceased had suddenly become very busy.

The daya lay Rahin gently in front of the infirmary in the Red Kingdom camp in a field further away. Two sorceresses rushed out of the tent to help her. One proceeded to examine her leg while the other sang healing chants.

Rahin took off the mask over her mouth to allow herself to breath more freely. Made of multiple layers of different fabrics, it had been invented in Mage City and was worn by all Red Kingdom soldiers to prevent them from breathing in the dust of the disintegrating Redeemed. Along with it, they also wore a type of close-fitting eyewear which prevented the blue stuff from getting into their eyes.

The healers lifted her up unto a litter and carried her into the infirmary tent, where they gave her a foul-tasting potion which put her straight to sleep. When she came to again, about a day had passed and she decided to travel back to Mage City, where she believed she would be of more use since she wouldn't be able to fight for quite a while.

Rahin spent the next fifty-five days in bed with her leg immobilized. To pass the time, she knitted socks for the soldiers, who were almost always out of proper clothing. She also gave lessons to younger and more inexperienced sorcerer and sorceresses. The latter helped her feel less lonely, but once the students had left her hut the same feeling of emptiness would fall on her and sometimes overwhelm her to the point of tears.

If only Number One had still been alive. Almost two winters had passed since he had died and sometimes she still caught herself looking around for his loyal presence, his gentle eyes. Sand dragons where such loving creatures but they sadly did not live very long. In moments of forced solitude, Rahin cursed that fact more than any other time.

On a particularly lonely day, comfort would come from an unlikely place. As her bed was located right by the hut window, Rahin would often look at the shitworm enclosure right outside of it. Three times a day someone would come by and empty the contents of the latrines into the manger. What ensued next was a spectacular struggle which never failed to amuse her. The worms would bite, ram and climb over each other in an attempt to get the biggest portion of the to them so delicious excrements. They would make those hissing, whistling sounds out of their little triangular mouths and create such a loud cacophony that it could be heard over all central Mage City.

Rahin was watching this entertaining scene when she suddenly heard another sound: that of something crawling across the floor. She grabbed the bow and arrow she kept by the bed but to her relief saw that it was just a shitworm.

"How'd you get in here?" She wondered out loud.

When it heard her voice, the worm turned away from the direction it was going and came towards her. It rubbed itself against a leg of the bed and made a high-pitched whistle that she knew was a sign of affection in its species.

"Oh, for crying out loud... What do you want, your slimy bug?"

Raising the front half of its body, the shitworm made a quick rocking motion and in a twisty kind of way threw itself up unto the bed. Rahin regretted having uttered any words. She knew how affectionate these things were and how drawn to human voices. Up till now she'd always ignored it as it made eating them with a clean conscience a little too hard. But on this day, she felt too lonely to reject any company, no matter how small.

"Fine. You can stay," she said yielding. "Just don't shit on the bed."

### *

The Redeemed rushed snarling and drooling towards him. At one point, the sight of the putrid thing that had once been human would have sent a chill down Beyam's spine but he had since learned that for all their intimidating looks, the Redeemed were surprisingly easy to kill. Barely had the edge of his sword touched the creature, that it evaporated into a cloud of blue dust.

Beyam swirled around, still carried by the strength of his motion, and stabbed the Redeemed coming up behind him. A third one threw itself at Beyam, who brought up his sword and killed it.

Dust rained down on him like fine snow as he kept moving so effortlessly that it felt like he was dancing more than fighting. He was about to strike another enemy when he stopped with his weapon held up mid-air.

A little girl. With a blonde braid on each side of her head and one good big blue eye staring up at him, she looked like innocence itself. Even with half her face getting eaten away by maggots.

She leapt towards him and he just now noticed that she had artificial metal claws on her fingers. He had not enough time to react but before she reached him he saw her head being separated from her body and both falling to ashes.

The King was on him in the next instant, holding him up by the collar as he made flames flare high around them.

"What was that about?" He barked out angrily.

"Wha..."

"You flinched. Why?"

"I... I don't know. She was just a child!"

"No. It wasn't," The King said, letting him go and shoving him away in the same gesture. "These things aren't human, Beyam. They're just bodies. Empty vessels that The Mighty uses. They're puppets on strings. Nothing more, nothing less. So, don't flinch. Flinchers die!"

The flames disappeared and the King jumped up in the air, leaving Beyam back to the heat of battle. It was won shortly thereafter. As always when the King fought alongside his people, the Redeemed had never stood a chance.

He would be going away again this evening, probably to some other battle. But before he flew away on his daya, the King had summoned Beyam to his tent. Thinking that he would be scolded for his fuck-up, the boy was holding his head down when he entered.

"Ah, here you are. Would you like something to drink?"

Beyam nodded shyly, surprised by the man's good mood. He couldn't help but cast a glance at the King's bed, which stood in the background. How he had fantasized about being invited into those sheets. About his King's strong arms wrapping themselves around him and telling him in a deep but gentle voice how much he loved him.

"You have quite a talent, do you know that, Beyam?" The King said as he poured them each a cup of warm evening tea.

"M... me?" The young man said blushing.

"Yeah. It's rare to see someone so young having such amazing fighting skills. Fuck, even I didn't know shit about being a warrior at your age."

Hearing the word fuck coming from the man he so desired made the blood rush even more to Beyam's cheeks. And to his groin.

"Anyway," the King went on, "that's why I have a special mission for you. One I wouldn't trust any other of my men with."

All this praise coming from his King was near overwhelming to him. He took a sip from the tea to calm himself down, found that it was too hot and burned his tongue. But it was a pleasurable pain, one that revigorated him.

"What sort of mission?"

"Tomorrow morning, a group of people will come from the north. They will be escorted by some of our soldiers who will then return to their garrison. I want you to accompany this group of people, twelve in total, to Mage City. Then you'll all wait there for my return. Keep them safe and I'll make it worth your while. I have all faith that you can and will give you seventy warriors to help you on your journey. How does that sound?"

"Yes! I mean great." He had almost shouted the first word, excited as he was for such an opportunity to serve his King. "I'll make you proud."

Beyam thought he saw a glimmer of affection in the King's eyes as he nodded and smiled. To see that again he felt prepared to fight ten thousand battles and the most monstrous enemies the world had ever seen.

## Chapter Five

Droplets of water fell on Rahin's face as she stuck her head out of the secret entrance to the underground city. Over sixty days had passed since she had last experienced fresh air and she felt a mild shock at the cold. It was nearing autumn, if she remembered correctly, but she had still expected it to be a bit warmer outside.

Perhaps it was because it was early in the day. The heat of the sun had not yet evaporated the night's dew and everything around was wet. She felt the unpleasant sensation of water sipping into the fabric of her dress as she leaned against a tree but she ignored it. Climbing out with that useless leg of hers had been quite the challenge and she needed a moment to rest.

A memory of that traumatic surgery she had had flashed through her mind and she shook her head, as if doing so would make the images fall out of her skull. Thank Spirit she had passed out from the pain so that she hadn't been conscious for the worst part of it. Even if in the end her leg would never be the same again.

Rahin stared off in the distance, where the tall grass of a clearing could be sighted beyond the trees. There was a thin mist moving over it and she remembered a legend common among northern tribes: that it was the souls of the dead dancing. If you walked into it you could sometimes for a fleeing moment see the face of a loved one who had passed on, it was believed.

She thought she saw the contour of someone walking through the mist and dismissed it first as a product of her overactive imagination. But as the silhouette was joined by a couple more, she realised that what she was seeing was real. By the odd way they walked she also knew what they were and reached for the fighting knife at her belt.

"It's okay. They're with me."

The voice sounded off, like it came from nearby and far away at the same time. From stories she had been told, she knew whose it was. Turning slowly around as she pulled her weapon, she hoped that her eyes would prove her wrong.

"You know that's useless," The Mighty said and pushed the knife out of her hand with an invisible force.

"What do you want?" Rahin asked, trying to sound firm but couldn't stop her voice from trembling.

"I am here to help you."

"Really?" She said and laughed. "Well, I've seen what your help looks like and I don't want it."

Rahin noticed that his feet weren't touching the ground but that he hoovered an arm's length above the ground. The fabric of his robe was fluttering as if caught in a light wind although the air around them was still.

"Oh, but I already have. I have observed you for a long time, Rahin. Since you were a child, I have followed you and come to know you well."

The thought sent a chill down her spine. Around her, the forest began to spin as The Mighty came to her. Soon he was so close that she could see her own reflection in his blank silver mask.

"I know what you want, your heart's foremost desire. And I have come to offer it to you."

"Yeah, what's that?"

He did not answer. She kept fixating her own image and saw how it began to change. Her nose became smaller, her jaw less square and her masculine brow became less prominent. Breast appeared over her previously flat chest.

"I can make you on the outside who you are on the inside," The Mighty whispered. "Change your very flesh and show the world who you truly are. I already have begun. Haven't you noticed?"

Indeed, she had. Shortly before she had gotten injured, her facial and body hair had stopped growing. Fat as out of nowhere had overnight given her hips feminine curves. Her chest had become sore and begun to swell a bit. Even her skin had gotten softer, less rough and greasy.

"That was you?"

"Who did you think it was?"

"I don't know... I thought maybe there was something medically wrong with me, but..."

"But you didn't want it to end."

Rahin perceived that the forest had stopped moving around them. The Mighty put his gloved hands over her shoulders and he leaned his head down towards her in an almost fatherly fashion.

"It doesn't have to. Rahin, I have seen who you could become if only given the chance. Let me help you."

He lay a hand over her forehead. The leather of his glove felt cold against her skin. She had a vision of herself gazing into the eyes of a handsome man about her own age. Their clothes were stripped in green, yellow and blue. Traditional Toyanese wedding garbs.

Then she was suddenly standing in the doorway of a house, looking at children playing in the yard. A voice called out to tell them dinner was ready. She realised it was her own although it sounded different, more naturally high-pitched. The kids ran to her. Each gave her a hug before entering the house. They were two girls and one boy.

Another vision. Now she was an old woman. The children had grown up and were all gathered around a dinner table along with their children and grand-children. A boy about two seasons old was sitting in Rahin's lap, playing with one of her long grey braids as he smiled at her with smooth, toothless gums.

"This could be your life," she heard The Mighty's voice say. "If you join me."

The vision disappeared from her eyes and she saw him standing in front of her with his hand held out in an inviting gesture. She turned away and closed her eyes, hoping it was all just a bad dream.

"Even if you can make me a woman on the outside, what good does that do me if you turn everyone else into corpses for your army? What kind of life could I have in such a world?"

"You wouldn't have to live in it. After you'd assist me in removing my enemies from this land, you could travel to some other one. Start a new life in a place where no one knows of your past."

"But how..." She stopped mid-sentenced and scorned herself silently for even considering the thought of accepting his offer.

"How would you know I wouldn't take that land also?" He read from her mind. "We'd make a pact: I'll let you live out your life and will not attempt to conquer your new homeland for ten whole generations after your death. That way you will live free in the way you see fit and will have the knowledge that so will your children and grand-children."

Although the vision had stopped, it still haunted her. Taunted her with possibilities she couldn't even have dreamed of before.

"We both know, my child, how this will end if you persist in fighting me. You have read your father's last vision. You know the torment that will come. But it does not have to be this way."

Rahin turned away from him and began to walk away. Only had she taken a few steps when she realised she was walking normally. With trembling hands she lifted the lower end of her skirt and looked at her knee. It had been healed, not even a scar was visible on the skin.

"As you can see," she heard The Mighty's voice behind her, "I was able to cure you, alter your flesh in ways even the best among your sorcerers couldn't. Join me, Rahin! Join me and I will make you everything you've ever dreamed of."

### *

"Wait... Isn't that the kid you saved from being eaten by a giant spider?"

"Yeah, but that was a long while ago and he only went along with Silvi because she was going to go anyway and he wanted to make sure she was safe. That girl, I tell you, she's always up to no good. Plus, this kid is the best fighter I've seen. He might even be the best in the land. Except for me, of course."

"You've always been very humble."

"Ay, it's not bragging if it's true."

Liva laughed and pointed the way with her walking staff. Djeen kept following her among the gigantic red boulders so common in this part of the Toyanese desert. To him it all looked the same, just as the seemingly never-ending sand dunes had on their daya flight over here. But Liva knew this land like the back of her hand and they soon rounded a boulder behind which was an encampment of about seventy tents.

Women were busy at everyday chore such as hanging washed clothes and cooking, all while trying to keep an eye on the many children running around. The men were likely out hunting the Grand Fur Antelopes whose migratory path went nearby, Liva explained.

"The Elder Men will be in the main tent, though. They never leave the camp. You've got the thing?"

Djeen nodded and took out a glass jar from his shoulder bag. In it was a perfume made from carefully selected northern flowers one couldn't find here. The men of Liva's tribe were known for their love of dowsing themselves in pleasant-smelling mixtures of all kinds. He didn't really know why. Perhaps it had something to do with how sweaty one got out here.

Liva hit the ground with her staff three times and a voice from within the tent told them to enter. Inside were five elderly men sitting in a half circle smoking some musky smelling herb Djeen didn't recognise. The one in the middle had long locks covered in red and pink clay from the region. To wear this hairstyle, Liva had explained, was a honour only given to the leader of the tribe.

"So, you are the Red King," he said and sucked on his long pipe. "I have heard many tales about you."

"Likewise, Chief Garaytan. I have heard you are a man of wisdom and a unifier among the tribes. It is why I have come today to seek your counsel. I have brought a gift to show you my gratitude for allowing me to speak to you today."

Garaytan accepted the present and thanked Djeen with a nod. He then unscrewed the lid to the jar and breathed in the flowery smell. An approving smile appeared on his face and he dipped a finger into the perfume. With a gesture which looked like he was threatening to slit someone's throat, he spread the precious liquid across his neck.

"I have to say I am a little surprised," he said and put the jar down, "that a man as powerful as you would ask me for help. Of course, I would love to be of assistance. You have done so much to help me protect my people from the ones you called the Redeemed: given us special weapons, taught our sorcerers spells... I am just a bit perplexed."

Djeen searched for Liva's eyes but she was looking down at her feet. She knew as well as him the sensitive nature of their request.

"Well, you see... My scouts, the ones who fly across the lands on the dayas, have spotted an army of Redeemed south from here, about four days away. They believe they will soon be entering... Chadek Valley."

The tribe leader's eyes widened when he heard the last two words. Outraged words were shared between the four men behind him. He ordered them quiet by raising his hand.

"Only by travelling through the valley itself could you stop them in time. So, I imagine that what you wish for is my permission to enter our people's most sacred ground."

"Yes. Since you are the most respected leader of all the surrounding tribes, we'd also hope you would talk to the others on our behalf so that our troops would not be attacked by any Toyanese trying to protect the gates to the valley."

Garaytan sighed, looked down at his hands and then at his advisors, who all shook their heads in disapproval of Djeen's request.

"Chadek Valley is the home of our ancestors," he explained. "It is there their souls linger and pass from this world to the next when they come to guide our people. To trespass into this place is an act of great disrespect towards ancient and powerful spirits."

The men behind him nodded, mumbled approving words between themselves. Djeen felt his heart sink. He had to stop the Redeemed from progressing further north but he didn't want to have to kill any innocent Toyanese in the process. Not to mention it would severely damage his relationship with the tribes of the south-east.

"However," Garaytan went on, "it would be less of an affront to let you pass through the Valley than to let these... Redeemed... enter the holy ground. Our ancestor spirits are wise. Disrespectful it would be to assume they would not understand the direness of the situation. You have my permission and I will speak to the other tribe leaders about the matter. I just have one request."

### *

"Who is that?"

Rahin whispered the words to herself when she saw him. A Toyanese man about her own age, maybe a bit younger, he was tall and slender with dark braids reaching down to his waist. The buttocks and tights below it were quite muscular she noticed but did not allow her eyes to linger. Instead she focused on the masculine profile of his face, his jaws so pleasingly square and his smile so blindingly white that she couldn't tear her eyes away. If only he would look back towards her so that she could see into his eyes. Then she would know what kind of man he was.

"So, is it true what they say about this place?"

Startled by Liva suddenly at her side, Rahin looked up with a feigned absent-mindedness at the red canyon cliffs towering above them.

"Hm, oh yes," she said not really knowing what she was answering.

"About the spirits of my people? They really guard this place?"

"It is. Ever since we entered the valley I have sensed their presence. There must be ten thousands of them in here, at least."

"Are they angry?"

"No, I think they know why we're here."

In fact, they seemed concerned. About what exactly, she didn't know. With Djeen here it was unlikely their battle against the Redeemed would be much of a struggle. Rahin listened in more closely to the spirits. She could swear they were repeating a word over and over again.

"Liva, what does xenbak mean?"

"It's a hunting technique used by some tribes in the area. Not mine, though. We aren't that barbaric. Trapping some poor animal in a pit and stoning it to death is not how we do things."

A sudden realisation came over Rahin. She looked back at where they had come from, at the long trail between desert cliffs, and then at the sky. There, about three hundred feet away, she saw them coming.

"Trap! It's a trap! Run!"

Dayas carrying heavy rocks were flying down towards them at an impossible speed. Even as they ran for their lives, Rahin knew they could never get away in time. Thankfully, Djeen was here. He was leaping to the sky before the birds had any chance to reach them. With a few strokes of his blade he had reduced all the dayas, a dozen of them, to ashes. The stones fell to the ground below, moving up the desert dust to high clouds of red.

Rahin let out a sigh of relief and thanked the spirits as the people around her cheered at the King's latest exploit. But the spirits did not seem relieved. If anything, they had become ever more restless. She also perceived a faint tremor through the soles of her sandals and felt small pebbles move around her feet.

The first boulder had fallen from the edge of the cliff to her left before she had the chance to react. At impact, about four or five soldiers had been crushed. Now it was rolling towards her. She jumped out of its way but found herself in the path of another right about to hit her.

A familiar smell of sweat and sulphur. Flashes of red from the earth and blue from the sky. The dying screams of soldiers. Then she was suddenly on top of a cliff, looking down at the canyon named Chadek Valley. Below, a flame was moving at incredible speed as Djeen smashed boulders to pieces, moved people out of the way, killed the Redeemed up on the cliffs as well as their own dead who had risen again.

"No!"

She recognized the voice of the man she had been admiring earlier and found he was standing beside her. One of the people to be killed by the first rock had been the man travelling by his side, another Toyanese of the same tribe. Djeen had now had to destroy him as his body had been taken by The Mighty and become a Redeemed.

Rahin put a hand on the sobbing man's shoulder. She thought she should try and say something comforting but knew there were few words appropriate in such a situation. The man looked at her with tearful eyes.

"I promised his family I would keep him safe. What am I supposed to say to them?"

Below, things had returned to a relative calmness. Here and there were cries which sounded almost like an echo of those let out by the man beside her. People were picking up their weapons and gear and preparing to march on. An army of Redeemed were still approaching the Valley and needed to be fought off. War did not rest and neither could they.

### *

"So, who was that?"

"Uh?" Djeen said and looked up from picking at something on his arm.

"That Toyanese man with the long braided hair."

"Oh, him. That's Sovo, Garaytan's son. It was the condition he had to let us walk through Chadek Valley. His son had to come along. He's also going to stay with us for a while. His father wants him to see the world, understand it better so that he'll be a good leader when he takes on after him."

"So he's a prince?"

"And I hear he hasn't found himself a princess yet."

Rahin pushed away the finger he was poking at her and felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. Despite herself, she laughed.

"Oh, shut up! That's not why I'm asking. I was just curi... Wait, what is that?"

She grabbed Djeen's arm and held it up to the light. Her eyes were not deceiving her. Midway on the upside of his forearm was a small scab.

"How did this happen? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Calm down, Rahin. It's just a cut."

"But you don't get cuts. Djeen, I've seen you fall from the sky without even getting a scratch on you. When did this happen?"

He sighed and rolled his eyes, which particularly annoyed her. With the tip of his finger, he patted on the small skin injury, as if doing so would somehow give him answers he was searching for.

"I don't know exactly. After we had defeated the Redeemed south of Chadek Valley, I looked down and saw this speck of blood on my arm. Didn't realise it was mine at first but when I wiped it away I saw the tear in my skin."

Rahin gently took his arm into her hands and let her fingers run over the scab. She lacked any proper healing powers but hoped she could sense what was going on in his body. It wasn't a lack of food, she knew that. The man ate like a horse and enjoyed every moment of it.

Perhaps it was too much stress and not enough rest. Djeen fought several battles every day, at sometimes completely opposite sides of the world. Both day and night. She wondered if he even had the time to think about anything else but killing Redeemed.

"When was the last time you slept?"

"I don't know," he answered pensively. "Forty something days."

She grabbed his face and turned his head towards her. The indignant look in his eyes, so boyish and pure, would have made her smile had it not been for the severity of the situation.

"Heavens, Djeen! You need to rest. No wonder you're falling apart."

"I am not falling apart," he said with a laugh and softly pushed her hands away. "I'm fine. Normal men need to sleep and you know I'm nothing but normal. And when I sleep, people die."

Rahin detected a barely masked sadness in his voice when he spoke the last sentence. Knowing him, she felt this must be why he allowed himself no respite. She needed to have a talk with him about it. But not now. A messenger had ridden into camp and was calling for the King.

"Red King! Red King! Master of the Shadow Kingdom! Deliverer of the poor of the two nations! Show yourself!"

It sounded like a child taunting him but what they found upon leaving the tent was a tall cloaked figure sitting on top of a horse. Rahin saw the void in the beast's eyes and knew with once what it was. By the angered sigh Djeen let out, she understood that he was seeing it too.

"You have a lot of guts showing yourself here, Mighty. Well, not yourself really. Whatever poor bastard whose body you took."

The Mighty chuckled. The horse swayed in an unnatural manner which seemed to defy its weight. A long silence ensued, until Djeen lost his patience.

"So, what do you want?"

With a slow motion, the figure removed its cloak and gazed down at them with a smirk which didn't fit the emptiness in the dead boy's eyes.

"Beyam!"

Rahin recognized him as Djeen spoke his name. She shuddered at the sight of the young man, barely out of childhood, whose life had been cut so tragically short. Not that long ago, from what she could tell. There wasn't even a smell coming from either him or the horse.

"You piece of shit!" Djeen barked out and she saw sparkles of fire spraying along with spit out of his mouth. "He was just a..."

"Just a kid? Didn't seem to bother you much to send him on a deadly mission, though. If it is of any comfort, he did fight valiantly. You know what he said as he lay dying? 'I didn't flinch'. Kept repeating it over and over. I guess it meant something to him. Anyway..."

He dismounted and walked up to Djeen. Came to stand so close to him that it looked like he was about to lean down and kiss him.

"You probably wonder where the people he was supposed to protect are. First, let me assure you that they are all very alive, in the classical sense."

"I figured. They would be of minimal value to you dead. You want something for them, don't you? What is it?"

That smirk again. That insufferable demonic smile on the boy's innocent face. Beyam's dead hand reached into his vest pocket and took out a scroll. Djeen snapped it impatiently from him and opened it. After casting a quick glance at its content, he gazed northward past the boy, at the Wind Mountains on the horizon.

"Come see me there," The Mighty spoke through the corpse. "The exact location is marked on the map. Show it to no one. Come alone and unarmed."

Without any further words, he turned around to get back on the horse. But before he could, an arrow came flying through the air and turned him into a cloud of blue dust.

Djeen looked in the direction the projectile had come from and saw Rahin standing there with her bow. She stared right into the horse's eyes, through which The Mighty undoubtedly was observing them, and with a hatred he had never seen in her before.

"You had no right to harm this boy," she said with a poisonous calm. "We will make you pay for it. We will make you pay for everything."

### *

Neeva had felt lost ever since she had come to Ily. Not in the sense that she would go astray in the city. Thanks to a map she had bought upon arriving, she had learned how to find her way without much trouble.

No, it was another kind of lost. One that happened when you found yourself in a place where you where nothing but a face in the crowd, a spoke in a wheel which never stopped turning for anyone. In a city like Ily, you were utterly replaceable and therefore you never truly belonged.

After growing up in a tight-knit family in a tribal village, living in the capital had felt so suffocatingly alienating that she had decided to return home after only two seasons. That is, until The Messenger had arrived.

She wondered if people could miss what they'd never had. Many of her friends in this city had never known life in a tribe. They had only been familiar with this existence, this running around like ants in this anthill they called Ily. Still, the sense of belonging, of truly being part of a group, brought by The Messenger seemed to have liberated them as much as it had done for her.

"I... want... to... go... home."

The girl let out a sob between every word, making Neeva roll her eyes in exasperation. It was always the same drama whenever they caught young people in forbidden endeavours. They cried and wailed, pretended like they regretted doing what they had so gladly been doing before the Purity Squad stopped them. Irritated, she wished she could have given the girl a more severe punishment. But The Mighty knew better and His rules were the ones to be followed.

"You will get to soon, little girl. Because of your age and the fact that you are a first-time offender, The Mighty will show you mercy. Your sentence will be forty lashes."

The child pleaded for more lenience, promised to never dance again. Neeva had no patience for her wining and ordered a subordinate to carry out the punishment. She would have preferred to do it herself as the other women often showed too much restrain when it came to lashing children but she had to be on her way.

She left the headquarters of the Southside Purity Squad and walked north, towards the centre of the city. As she did so, she saw with pride what Ily had become in such a short time. These streets used to be littered with cripples, beggars, homeless children and hustlers of all kinds. Poverty had been rampant as well as crime. The Messenger and his troops, guided by the all-knowing hand of God, had cleaned it all up nicely. Everyone had been giving a proper place and the few who couldn't be of any use to society had been given peace through a merciful death. All around her, Neeva saw order and unity like she only could have dreamed of before.

Still, she could not feel completely satisfied. The fault was only her own, she knew. Her impatience was what hindered her from feeling the happiness proper for the gifts The Mighty had given her and the city. She mustn't let her emotions stand in the way of being the best she could be for The Mighty, even if she of course would never be fully worthy of His love.

Besides, things had been moving forward. Just yesterday she had gotten confirmation that her application to join the Cherished Ones had been received. A few more days and she would be called in for the first interview.

Until then, she would occupy herself with her job fighting immorality with the Purity Squad and of course with what she was on her way to do now: teach young children about The Mighty and His law. It was an even more important work, as forming the minds of little ones at an early age would likely make them purer, less rebellious subjects for God.

A familiar scent caught her attention and she looked up to see a troop of Cherished Ones passing by. These soldiers who had given their all to The Mighty wore a body armour stripped bronze and silver which covered everything, even their eyes. When your soul fully belong to the Creator, she'd been told, you could see without seeing and knew secrets of the Heavens without knowing.

The first time she had encountered Cherished Ones she could have sworn an odour of decaying flesh had been coming from them. Of course, her thinking had since been rectified and she had heard it spoken that a scent of rose water emanated from the bodies of the Cherished. Now she could smell it and wondered how she ever could have sensed something else.

### *

Two winters had passed since Djeen had seen Tomeer. At least two more since they relationship had ended. The reason for it, according to Tomeer, being that "the spark" between them had died. Considering who he had been talking to, Djeen had deemed it a particularly poor choice of words.

What had hurt the most was the fact that to Tomeer it had all along been about nothing but "a spark" or some fuzzy feeling in his tummy. Djeen had thought their connection had been deeper than that. Even if his love for Tomeer had not been quite a strong as the one he had felt for someone else, a long time ago.

Djeen forced himself to push aside painful memories resurging in his mind and to focus on what was in front of him. The snow was reaching up to his knees now. Or it would have had he not been able to melt it before his path. As for the wind, it was still. Which was a welcomed surprised even if the temperature up here was low enough that a normal man would have frozen to death long before reaching this high.

He had worried that he had been reading the map wrong, so seeing the entrance to the cave he had been searching for gave Djeen a sense of relief. And that maybe, finally, this whole ordeal would soon come to an end.

Two Redeemed where standing guard, although against what exactly he didn't know. The weather was so freezing here that not the slightest vegetation grew. It was a place with no life, only rocks and snow.

Aflame torches lighted Djeen's way as he moved further into the cave. He hadn't prepared himself, not try to set himself mentally for meeting again the monster who had held him captive through much of his youth. Perhaps it was why he felt a surge of nausea when he turned a corner and suddenly found himself in a hall where The Mighty himself was sitting upon a high throne.

"So, you came," the demon said.

Djeen looked up into the silver mask and felt like he was staring into an abyss. The blank shiny surface made his head spin for an instant and he had to make an effort to regain his composure.

"Yeah. I'm here," he said and pulled down the hood of his cape. "What do you want from me?"

"Right to the point, I see."

The Mighty rose from his throne and walked to him. Djeen had forgotten how small he had always felt next to him. And how helpless.

"I don't see a reason to waste any time. Tell me what you want. But first, give me proof that Tomeer and his family are alive."

Raising his hand, The Mighty made move six Redeemed who had been standing against a wall and they disappeared through a gateway. Soon, they came back carrying three metal cages which they put on the ground. In one was Tomeer comforting his daughter, holding her in his arms as she cried.

"Djeen!" He exclaimed when he saw his former lover running up to them.

"I'm going to get you guys out of here," Djeen said and took Tomeer's hand in between the bars of the cage. "I promise."

"I will release them," he heard The Mighty's voice behind him. "Just give me what I want. It's only one thing: the sword."

An expression of dread appeared on Tomeer's face. He knew as well as Djeen did how important that blade was. If ever it was to fall into the hands of The Mighty, not only their fates would be sealed but that of every living thing under the sun.

"Don't!" He said squeezing Djeen's hand. "Find another way. Or we'll all be doomed!"

"I will give it to you," Djeen said and turned away from Tomeer and his pleas. "Right now!"

He reached back for his sword which he had hidden underneath his shirt and threw the weapon across the room. The point of the blade hit the neck of The Mighty which such speed that his head was separated from his shoulders as easily as a petal ripped from a flower.

The others gasped in surprised as the body fell to the ground. With his bare hands, Djeen tore the bars from the cages and threw them behind him. They hit the ground with a metallic clamour which echoed alongside the laughter and happy sobs from the freed prisoners.

He made a quick check that everyone was accounted for and urged them to follow him. They had nearly made it out of the room when a large rock fell from the ceiling and blocked the entrance.

"You silly, silly boy..." They heard the Mighty laugh behind them. "You have no idea how you're supposed to use that sword to kill me, do you?"

Djeen felt the demon's skeletal hand on his shoulder. A piercing stream of energy cursed through his body, made him kneel. He tried to get back up but found he couldn't move.

"So much like your mother," he heard The Mighty whisper in his ear. "The same arrogance and rage. Did Hamin ever tell you about her? He knew her quite well. Was even present when she died. Wait, what was that?"

He leaned in closer to Djeen, who was trying desperately to open his mouth. After much struggling, he managed to croak out three words.

"Let... them... go."

"Well, yes of course!" The Mighty answered with an unsettlingly cheerful tone. "I got what I wanted, so I will keep my word and set them free."

Holding up Djeen's sword, he pointed to the prisoners and ordered the Redeemed:

"Slit their throats."

## Chapter Six

"What the fuck is that?!"

Teok jumped up in fright when he saw the strange green creature, much to Silvi's amusement. She put her arm around his chest from behind and pulled him close to her.

"It's okay," she said playfully. "I'll protect you, princess."

"Haha," he retorted sarcastically and freed himself from her grasp. "But seriously, what is it?"

"Oh, that's just Chunky. He's grown a bit "

The creature, tall enough to reach a man's waist, had indeed changed since Teok last had seen it. Apart from the increase in since and shift in colour, it had developed eyes and something on its head which looked like small ears but which Teok suspected were the beginning of antennas.

"I wonder what they look like when they're done growing. And what they are."

"Yeah," Silvi said. "Me too. I always thought the shitworms were adult by the time we eat them. They even lay they own larvae before that."

Teok petted the head of the gigantic bug, who was rubbing up against his leg. Chunky let out a grunt that made him sound like a fat boar. The shitworm Rahin had, for some reason no one could figure out, kept as a pet sure seemed as affectionate as the last time he had seen it.

"Where's Rahin?" He asked, having come to think of her. "She any better?"

"Nah," Silvi said and shook her head sadly. "It's been over two days now and he still hasn't come back. She's getting more and more distraught. Also, I get the feeling she's not telling us something."

He had gotten that impression too. On the day Djeen had left, Rahin had looked at him like it was the last time she would ever see him. Meanwhile, the rest of the people had been optimistic, convinced as they were that the King was on his way to defeat The Mighty and end this despicable war once and for all.

"It's getting kinda stuffy in here. Wanna go out for a walk?"

It had been days since he had last left the camp and it was starting to feel oppressively small. So, he accepted Silvi's offer. He also looked forward to spend some time alone with her, away from this place where intrusive eyes lurked behind the round of every tent.

The weather outside was sunny and less windy than was typical for the season. Along with them they had brought Rose, the King's dog, and a handful of Ilyian soldiers enchanted by Silvi. Rahin insisted that she always had some with her, as protection.

"I know. It's awful," Silvi said when she caught Teok staring at the men.

"Oh, no. I think it's great. I wish my soldiers were this obedient."

"It's not funny!" She retorted, suddenly furious. "You don't know what it's like, to have to do this to people! To know they'll never be the same because of you!"

She walked off the beaten path, away from him. Teok had to run to catch up to her as she went on with long, angry strides and wiped the tears from her eyes. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close to him.

"I'm sorry. Please don't go."

Silvi hit his chest, tried to push him away. But he wouldn't let her go. He patted her hair in a manner he hoped she would interpret as caring. It was fairly certain that he had blown his chance to get beneath her skirt today but he still had the chance to make her like him enough that he would get the opportunity in the future.

"No, I'm sorry", she said after having calmed down. "I didn't mean to shout at you like that."

"It's alright. Let's not speak of it. We... what is it with that fucking dog?"

Rose had been particularly excitable today. Smelling every tree, running up and down and barking frantically at everything and nothing. Now she had bitten into the cuff of his pants and was trying to pull him away. Teok did his best to mask his nervousness from Silvi but Rose, how sweet as she could be, was still a beast ferocious enough to rip a grown man's jugulars out in one bite and he couldn't help but tremble a bit when he spoke.

"Let go of me. What is it with you today?"

Silvi grabbed Rose's collar and the dog let go at once. She looked up at the humans with an expression of determination in her big dark eyes, barked a few times and took off as fast as an antelope speeding away from a pack of hungry lions.

"She wants to show us something!" Silvi exclaimed, took his hand in hers and ran.

Rose was probably just acting like the dumb beast she was but Teok decided to humour Silvi and came along as obediently as one of her enchanted soldiers. Catching up to the dog proved to be harder than he had expected. Not only was Rose about the same size as a small horse, she was as fast as one also. Soon she was nothing to their sight but a small white dot on the horizon. They still managed to not lose her and she took them all the way to the foot of the Wind Mountains.

"We should go back," Teok said when he saw the high tops towering towards the sky.

"We can't return without Rose, Rahin 'll kill us. Come on, surely the Golden Emperor is not afraid of some big rocks and snow."

That woman always knew exactly what to say to get under his skin. A though of pushing her unto the grown, lifting her skirts and teaching her a lesson passed through his mind but he decided to let it go. He would show her soon enough that he had never stopped being an Emperor.

They continued walking through the cold landscape, where trees and bushes were gradually replaced by rock and ice. A wind carried with it a light snow, which twirled in the air like a million tiny white swallows. Rose led them alongside a thin creek where the clearest water Teok had even seen flowed over a bed of ice.

After a while, Rose found something in the water and became visibly excited. She barked loudly, jumped around and nibbled on the mysterious blue and red object. As they got closer, Teok realised it was a body.

By the short stature of the naked man and the red hair on his head, Teok had a feeling of who he could be. To be sure, he turned the corpse unto its back and stared into its face.

"Djeen..."

The King's eyes were still wipe open, his irises as heavenly blue as the ice below the water. Blue was also his skin and black patches covered parts of his body and half his face where something had burned his flesh to a crisp.

"It can't be," Silvi sobbed. "He was the King, the one who would save us all. What do we do now?"

"We'll have to save ourselves, I guess. First, let's get his body back to camp. Give him a proper burial."

Teok closed his former friend's eyes, took him into his arms and Silvi lay her outer coat over her King to cover him from curious eyes. In silence, they made their way back to camp. Rose followed them, wagging her tail and keeping a close eye on the precious bundle Teok was carrying. The poor animal probably thought her master was only asleep and would at any moment jump up to play with her.

Rahin was instructing a group of women cooking the evening meal when Teok and Silvi arrived back at camp. The sorceress noticed Silvi's red face and swollen eyes and knew with once that something terrible had happened. Then she saw that Teok was carrying what looked like a body. By the bird tattoo on the arm which hanged and swayed from below the coat, she realize who it was.

"No! No! No!" She cried out as she ran up to them. "It can't be! It's not possible!"

Violently, she ripped away Silvi's coat from Djeen. Seeing with her own eyes the burned corpse of her friend, she fell to her knees and began to sob.

"I don't understand", she murmured to herself. "This isn't what the prophecy said. It wasn't supposed to happen this way."

Teok felt himself choking up. He had feared what Djeen had become but a long time ago they had been friends. Two poor young lads dreaming of a better life in the greatest city of the world. Still he could recall their camaraderie on the long, starry nights around a campfire as they shared their hopes and plans for the future.

"Why you cryin' for?"

He dropped Djeen onto the ground in stupor when he heard him mumble out those words. The King got up and took a few wobbly steps towards Rahin, who was staring in shock up at her resurrected friend. An attentive soldier threw an enchanted, blue-glowing dagger at Djeen and it lodged itself between two of his ribs. Dark red blood began to run down his chest but he remained the same, not falling to dust like a Redeemed would have.

"You're alive," Rahin said astounded.

"Of course I'm alive," he said and looked down, only now noticing that he had been hit. "Which one of you cunts stabbed me?"

### *

The room was silent. Or it would have felt that way to most people. For Hamin, it was full of whispers, echoes which told him about his surroundings. The sound of Chunky crawling across the floor, distant voices travelling in from outside the tent, the peaceful breathing of Djeen and of the dog lying by his feet on the bed; all helped paint a lively picture in Hamin's mind.

By the way Djeen moved beneath the sheets, Hamin understood that he had woken up. He expected him to fall asleep again as the young man had been drifting in and out of consciousness for days. But he sat up and petted Rose on the head.

"Hamin?" He spoke with a feeble voice after a while.

"Yes?"

"Who were my parents?"

Hamin had dreaded this question for a long time. Oddly enough, now that he heard it he felt calm. Already relieved by the words he was about to speak.

"Your mother's name was Batta. She was a temple worker. Unfortunately," he paused and took a deep breath, "the reason she had pledged service was to get close to the man who was Beloved One before me and kill him as revenge for executing her brother."

"My uncle, then. What did he do?"

"He was caught in an... intimate situation with another man."

The former temple leader felt a sting of shame when he thought back on how he used to view people who love the same sex. Fear and disgust had blinded him to the oppression such men and women faced in his homeland. As Beloved One, he had killed them with the same self-righteousness as when he executed murderers or rapists. Having Djeen, a man he loved like a son, be himself a lover of men had opened his eyes, ironically enough. Even if it had taken some time.

"As the new Beloved One, you had to handle her execution."

"Yes," Hamin answered, not missing the reproach in Djeen's voice. "Although it was considered such a rare and serious offence to kill the leader of a temple that The Mighty himself came to carry out the sentence. But I did assist him. Forgive me."

Unexpected even to himself, he burst out into sobs. With his hands he covered his face to hide the tears which weren't falling from the eyes he did not have. He felt himself shaking and the sound of his cries covered all others, painted the room as dark as his soul was feeling. But a friendly hand touched his shoulder and comforted him.

"Do not be hard on yourself, Hamin. It's a different life, a different world beyond the mountains. We've all done things we regret."

The old man took Djeen's scared hand in his and held it like it was the last thing anchoring him to this world. He hadn't expected the young man to forgive him and he still would never truly forgive himself.

"You must wonder also about your father," Hamin said when he had somewhat regain his composure. "Sadly, we never figured out who he was. It must have been one of the other temple workers but she wouldn't give up his identity no matter what..."

... we did to her, he was about to add before stopping himself. The extent of the torture he and The Mighty had put Batta through wasn't something Djeen needed to know. Enough heartbreak had already come to him in this life.

"She had quite the personality, your mother. I think you got your fierceness from her. Someday I will tell you more about Batta. Right now you should get some rest. Get well, heal so you can get back in the game."

"The game?"

"Y'know... the war. Still going on strong. But you shouldn't worry about that now, son. Focus on getting back on your feet."

He patted him gently on the head before existing the tent. Chunky followed him with excited squeals out into the late morning sun. From what he could hear, the camp was steaming with activity. It would soon be midday and lunch was being prepared for about two thousand soldiers.

Behind the clinking of metal pans and the shouts of cooks, Hamin heard Djeen whisper to himself:

"The war is already lost."

### *

The woman looked at the necklace of precious gold the man was holding up. Nervously, she covered it with her hands and pushed it back into his bosom.

"Sir," she whispered, " I can't help you. So quit asking before you get us both in trouble."

"Please," he kept begging with tears in his voice. "I have more back in my home village. Gemstones and silver and even more gold and..."

"It's not about the price," she interrupted him. "You could give me all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't be of any use to me with my head cut off!"

She shook her head in exasperation. Whether it was at the man's stubbornness or at herself for raising her voice wasn't clear.

"Go away," she went on. "Do what the rest of us are doing: keep yourself busy and wait for this storm to pass."

"Will it ever?" He muttered and walked out of the alley.

Finally alone, the woman let out a sigh of relief and then one of sorrow. A preaching member of the Purity Squad, she was one of few who were allowed to leave Ily and it wasn't unusual for people to try and bribe her into sneaking them out of the city. To think, when The Great Divide had fallen the people had been cheering, unaware that the city which had become whole again would soon turn into one giant prison.

"What storm?"

Unbeknownst to her, another woman had been hiding behind the corner and listening to her previous conversation. She was younger, had light brown hair and eyes as green as spring grass. By the beige tunic and pants she was wearing one could see that she was also a member of the Purity Squad.

"What storm?" She repeated her question louder, angrier.

"Were you following me?"

"Why, you've got something to hide?"

The older woman ignored her questions and tried to walk past her but she moved into her path.

"Neeva, get out of my way."

"Why didn't you arrest that man? He is obviously planning insurrectional activity and tried to bring you into it too!"

"Neeva," she said and put her hands on the brunette's arms. "If we were to arrest everyone desperate to be reunited with their families on the outside, we'd have to imprison most of the city."

"If most of the city was," Neeva said and stood firmly in place when the other woman tried to make her move sideways, "then we indeed would have to. It is The Mighty's will that's all rebellious activity be reported and adequately punished."

"Well, then maybe The Mighty is wrong."

Through the eyes of a Redeemed rat peering over the edge of a roof above them, The Mighty watched the scene unfold. The one called Neeva stared in disbelief at the other. In her young eyes The Mighty could see that mixture of fear and doubt which was the fuel driving the most zealous of his worshippers' acts of faith. She grabbed the middle-aged woman by her long grey hair and slammed her head against a brick wall.

"Heretic! Blasphemer! How dare you speak like this?!"

Blood poured from the injured woman's temple. Disoriented, she wiped the red liquid from her eyes and tried to get back on her feet. Neeva, still fuming with rage, noticed a discarded brick on the ground. She picked it up without hesitation and hit down on her victim's head with such force that a loud crack echoed throughout the alley as her scalp split open.

The now lifeless body toppled face-first to the ground. A stream of still warm blood spread over the pavement and touched Neeva's sandaled feet. Horrified by what she had done, she dropped her improvised murder weapon into the puddle. A cry stuck in her throat as she put her bloodied hands over her mouth.

Sitting on his throne up in a mountain cave, The Mighty laughed. He watched her run into the empty street, on which she left dark red footprints along the way. So quickly she had become ravaged by guilt, that most precious weapon which he knew exactly how to use.

From a nearby building, he made a Cherished One step out into her path. Not looking, Neeva nearly collided with it. But the being put out its arms and caught her in its bosom.

"Child," The Mighty made the Cherished say, "I have such great plans for you."

### *

"Oh, Heavens no!"

Rahin attempted to lift Chunky out of the puddle of food but remembered that he had become too big for her to carry, so she took off one of her sandals and chastised him with it. The scared beast crawled away with fearful and indignant squeals.

On the floor, the barrel containing the mixture of grains and shitworm meat lay shattered all over the floor and she gave out a heavy sigh at the thought of having to clean all this mess up.

"Goodness, Chunky! That is... That's just wrong," Silvi said as she wiped the gooey food from the giant insect.

Rahin had not noticed her entering and immediately avoided her gaze, where the same accusation had lingered for days. She proceeded instead to do what she had come to the aviary to do: attach letters to carrier eagles and send them to Red Kingdom generals all over the land. It was an inconvenient way to communicate but unfortunately the only one they had to do it over such long distances. The upside was that it made it easier to conceal matters she preferred them not to know, such as the fact that their King had failed to defeat The Mighty and nearly got himself killed in the process of trying.

"The King is getting better," she heard Silvi say carefully behind her. "He's even walked a bit today. Not far, just from the bed to the chair. But it's something."

There was a poorly concealed accusatory tone in her voice. Rahin tried to ignore it but her conscience wouldn't quite let her. Not once since he had awoken had she gone to see him. She had tried numerous times to make herself walk into his tent but an overwhelming feeling of guilt had stopped her.

"It wasn't your fault," Silvi tried. "You couldn't have..."

"That's not why," Rahin protested. "I've just been busy, is all. With him incapacitated someone's got to keep things rolling. War doesn't rest."

She attached the last scroll to the leg of a young eagle born the previous spring. Free Fly they had named him because he loved to do vaults up in the sky. Rahin gave him a scratch, right below the beak where he liked it, and opened the roof hatch to let the birds out. As always when she saw them fly away, she felt a pinch in her heart. The Mighty's own Redeemed eagles were patrolling the blue and it wasn't unusual for the Red Kingdom's own birds to never reach their destination.

Distracted, Rahin had almost forgotten Silvi's presence. But there she was, still with that disappointed look on her face. Rahin began to search for an excuse and found one right by her feet.

"I've got to clean up this disaster before going to bed."

"It's okay. I'll do it," Silvi said and grabbed a broom in a hinting gesture Rahin pretended not to get.

"Thank you. Well, I'll see you tomorrow."

"He's still awake. The King. In case you want to go see him."

Rahin nodded and smiled but knew that she would not. To see him like that, burned all over... She knew she could not stand it. Not yet.

Coming back to her tent, she noticed a light from inside. Because she knew that she had turned off her oil lamp and because she saw the figure of someone sitting on her bed, she realized she had company. Just to be safe, she readied her knives. Although it was probably only Hamin, who always seemed so melancholically lonesome in the evenings and would often come by to make her some tea and talk.

The sorceress was surprised to see that it was Djeen who had come to see her.

"You're up," she said.

"Yes, I wanted to talk to you before I leave."

"Leave? For where?"

She sat down by his side and felt tears well up in her eyes when she saw the dirty bandages that still covered large parts of his body.

"I don't know. Wherever the road takes me. But I need to be gone so that you guys have a chance to win this war."

"What are you talking about? We can't do it without you. Only you can..."

"The sword didn't work, Rahin. I cut off his head and he didn't die!"

Djeen burst out into exasperated laughter which turned into sobs. He did not attempt to dry his eyes, only stared at her with despair. Blood mixed with his tears on the injured side of his face and created a pattern which made Rahin think of a stream of lava running down a mountain.

"I am not the one from your father's visions," he said and stood up leaning on his crutch. "And I must go because everything I touch turns to ashes."

Without any further words, he stepped out of the tent and whistled for a daya. The bird flew down to the ground, let him climb up between its massive wings.

"Take good care of our people, Rahin. Goodbye."

"Djeen, wait!" She called after him.

But the daya took off towards the sky and disappeared behind heavy black clouds. It began to rain.

### *

Silvi wrapped the blanket tighter around her naked shoulders. She looked at the vast grass field where there were about five hundred tents with twelve of her enchanted soldiers in each. Most were asleep as it was night time but a handful were in front of her, enacting a popular play she liked. Once, she would have felt guilty for using them in such a way but now she was too angry and bored to care.

"Oh, you wretched woman! You ungrateful harlot!"

The plot had reached the pivotal point when the husband finds his wife in bed with two of their male servants. In a rage, he grabs a decorative marble cat. Since there were no such fancy ornamental animals accessible in the military camp, a large rock was used as a replacement when the "husband" pretended to beat the other two men to death.

He then raised his weapon towards his spouse but in a moment of clarity remembered that he loved her far too much to do her any harm. The man tossed the cat aside and the wife, suddenly ravaged by guilt, rushed to embrace him. But before she could, he seized a letter opener from his desk and stabbed himself in the heart.

The man playing the husband feigned to collapse and the one acting the part of the wife caught him into his arms. In the final moment of the play, the cucked husband caresses the face of the woman he loves, smiles and takes his last breath. After which she howls out her despair before plunging the letter opener into her own heart.

"That's a tad dramatic," Teok said as he emerged from the bushes where they had made love earlier in the evening.

He was wearing nothing except the wool blanket he had tied around his waist. Silvi blushed with lust at the sight of his shaved upper-body, this wonderful landscape of soft and hard.

"I couldn't sleep. Unlike some, I can't just roll over and into sweet dreams," she said light-heartedly.

Teok gave her a crooked smile and walked to the soldiers who had put on the show for her and who now were standing around, staring emptily in front of them.

"What a simple, blissful life it must be for them."

"What are you even on about, Teok?" Silvi laughed confusedly.

"See," he said as he stood behind one of the enchanted and put his hands on the man's shoulders. "They go about their day. Eat, sleep and even shit when you tell them to. And whenever they get to obey one of your orders, they get that glimmer of pure bliss in their eyes. They exist and thrive on making your will their law. Every day, their innermost dreams come true and they are happy."

From time to time, Silvi had thought she could see emotions in the eyes of the enchanted men. Sadness, fear and yes, even joy. She had thought she was imagining things but having Teok see it too reassured her.

With the King gone to Spirit knew where, she had to use her gift more than ever before. An increasing number of men lost themselves to her voice and with each time she had found herself more desensitised to the amount of power she held over them.

And sometimes it even gave her a certain... thrill.

## Chapter Seven

Rahin kicked the sand and as it flew up in a little cloud, she found to her disappointment yet again that it didn't get any more interesting the more you did it. She looked up at the bright blue, cloudless sky. The sun's light blinded her and burned in her eyes. Her throat was dry, her lips also. She cursed Djeen for forcing her to chase him out here. But she refused to give up, she had to catch up to him.

"Girl, come here." She turned to the sand dragon she had rented to carry her luggage during her journey. "Come here, I need water."

The animal came to her but just as she was about to grab her gourd, the dragon accelerated and ran off. Rahin screamed out in frustration. She had been walking for many days, hadn't eaten anything in at least two and the very thought of having to chase after that stupid beast just to get a sip of water made her want to cry.

"Come back here!" She yelled and ran after the dragon. "Don't do this to me now, you bitch!"

She saw it disappear behind a slope and heard it slide down in the sand. As it did so, the sand dragon made those quick grunting sounds its kind made when they were happy. This annoyed Rahin to no end and she looked forward to giving the animal a proper beating with her sandal and see the hurt in that stupid lizard face.

Rahin was walking with such furious steps that she forgot about the slope and found herself suddenly sliding down it head first. Sand stung in her eyes, got in her mouth and nostrils. She was coughing violently when her fall finally came to a halt.

Spitting out phlegm full of golden desert sand, she got up and searched for the dragon. She saw one but it wasn't hers. Next to it was a person wearing a white and light blue cloak and examining what looked like an unrolled piece of parchment.

"You didn't happened to see a sand dragon running by?" Rahin asked.

The figure looked up and when the sorceress saw the old man's weather-worn face, she gasped in surprise.

"Father!"

"Hello, child. What brings you out here?"

Tears welled up in her eyes. Made the sigh of his gentle smile blurry. She threw her arms around him and began to sob uncontrollably.

"There, there," he said as he patted her back. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, father! How I miss you! How I'm lost without you!"

"Lost? No, child. You are doing great. I could not be more proud of who you have become."

Rahin took a step back to take a look at him who she could hardly believe she was seeing. Those big dark eyes, those bushy eyebrows and his skin wrinkly from a lifetime under the sun. It was him.

The dragon who accompanied him was wagging its tail and making little grunting sounds to get her attention. When she finally noticed it, she immediately recognised him.

"Number One!"

Overcome with joy, he rolled over on his back so that she would rub his belly.

"Who's a good boy?" She asked playfully as she did so. "Who's my big scaly baby? I'm so happy to see you! I thought you were..."

A sudden realisation. Things had become darker around them and the horizon had disappeared into a void. A wind was blowing but it wasn't a desert wind. It was cold, chilling even, and she could hear voices carried to her by it.

"Father," she whispered, "what is this place?"

"That is not important," he said and he took her hands into his frail old man ones. "What matters is that you must find Djeen. He is not out here. But you know that already. You must not run from what is coming. Go find him."

A little Toyanese boy was running in circles around them. He was smiling and giggling as he repeated something over and over again.

"Where the fire started... Where the fire started..."

Rahin turned to her father but saw that he had vanished along with Number One. The night around her grew darker as the boy kept on chanting.

"Father, where are you?" Rahin cried out.

"I am always with you," his voice answered. "Now go to him!"

"Wait! Don't leave me! I need you! Don't leave me!"

In the next moment, she was back in her bed and staring up at Sovo's handsome but shocked face. He removed his hand from her cheek when he saw that she was awake.

"Sorry," he said embarrassed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I heard you scream and feared you were in trouble."

The entry to her tent was open and a group of concerned women wrapped in their night robes were outside, looking at her with wide eyes.

What was it her father had been telling her? And the boy, he had kept saying something. A cold wind had been blowing and she had heard a noise, a cry...

"A baby's cry."

She rushed out of bed and pulled a dress over her mostly naked body. Part of the thin fabric got wedged in her loincloth, other parts stuck to her sweaty skin but after a bit of hustle she managed to get her clothing on. In her hurry, she had forgotten about Sovo and found him outside the tent, still rubbing his neck and looking as self-conscious as a young lad seeing a pair of tits for the very first time.

"You'll be okay?" He asked.

Rahin nodded, smiled warmly and walked past him to Hamin's tent, where she found the man snoring like a fat hog.

"Hamin!" She said as she shook him awake. "Hamin, wake up! It's about Djeen!"

"Uh, what? Djeen? Is he back?"

"Not yet. I need you to take me to him. Take me to where he was born."

### *

Sovo had never seen snow before leaving his home in the far south of the Toyanese desert. When he had seen it on the Wind Mountains and then falling from the sky when winter had come, he still could not have imagined that there was a place anywhere in the world with more snow. Now that he was standing knee-deep in the cold, wet stuff he realised how gravely mistaken he had been. It turned out the daylong journey through the Wind Mountain tunnels had been just the beginning of this ordeal.

"You still don't regret coming along?" Rahin asked with a teasing smile when she saw him shivering.

"N-no," he said between chattering teeth.

He had a sense that he had offended her when he had offered to follow her and Hamin in their search for Djeen. To make sure you're safe, he had blurted out like an idiot. Sovo had seen her fight, he knew she needed no bodyguard.

"Is there always this much snow?" Rahin asked Hamin.

"During this season. In the summer the layer of snow is much thinner."

"Summer snow... Oh, Spirit what have we gotten ourselves into?"

Rahin swung off her backpack and took out a pair of strange objects Sovo didn't recognise. They had an oval shape, a net of rawhide between the wooden frame and thick leather laces in the centre.

"Snowshoes," Rahin explained as she handed them to him. "The bindings go around your boots."

She and Hamin effortlessly put on each a pair of their own and Sovo copied them. He struggled a bit but had soon got them on and found that he now could walk on the powdered snow without sinking into it. An ingenious invention, these snowshoes. People had to be creative, he figured, to live in such a hostile climate.

The journey was expected to take at least fourteen days but would probably take longer as they were anticipating a number of snowstorms. Sovo wondered if this strange land he now found himself in was nothing but these vast plains of white which never seemed to end. After four and half days of walking, he found that it wasn't as they came across the first signs of vegetation.

The trees and bushes had oddly light colours. As if being exposed to so much white had killed some of their hue and left them pale. Sovo thought that they looked like the ghosts of trees who had died in another realm.

"What is the town where we're going called?" He asked one night as they were all three huddled in the small tent where they slept.

"It doesn't have a name," Hamin replied. "The Mighty believes that giving cities and regions names leads to people making where they're from a part of their identity and to him that's idolatry. People shouldn't identify with anything other than being his servants."

What was this ghastly land Sovo had found himself in, where the cities had no names and everything was the colour of death? He began to regret coming on this journey. The cold and the exhaustion from trying to stay warm made him feel as dead as he imagined the Redeemed felt. Only Rahin could make his soul feel heated, whenever he looked at her.

On the long nights where the shivering of his body made it nearly impossible to fall asleep, he would gaze at her sleeping face and find solace in her expression of peace. Hamin always slept in-between them and it made it easier for Sovo to resist the temptation to caress her full cheeks. Sometimes there would be a bit of stubble on them, which she always tried to hide and seemed quite embarrassed over. But he didn't care. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, regardless.

After seventeen days of travel, they finally arrived at their destination. It was also the first town they had come across and Sovo got a look of how people lived out here. The houses, small enough to be called huts, were remarkably similar to those you could find in the Toyanese land. Except they were made out of pale grey instead of red or golden brown clay. To everyone's surprise, they found the city completely deserted.

"I've wondered if there was anyone still alive on this side of the mountain," Hamin said in a sad voice. "Wouldn't shock me if every town in the land is like that."

The trio spent the rest of the day searching through all the huts and the few larger buildings. One of them was a prison, where in a small room on the top floor Djeen had been born. But he was himself nowhere to be found.

Having searched the entire city, they decided to move into one of the little huts for the night. They made a fire in the hearth and laid their sleeping bags near it. Since they had found not even a crumb of anything eatable, they shared a bar of the military-style dried food they had brought along. As they munched on their unappetizing diner, they made plans to go the next day to the temple outside of the city to see if Djeen would be there.

Sovo fell asleep feeling not quite full but warm for the first time in what felt like ages. When Rahin woke him up the next morning, he was both delighted to see her face and dreading having to walk out into the cold again. Hamin's remark that there might be food at the temple did make him feel a tad more enthusiastic.

"If there's anything to eat anywhere near here," the old man said, "we'll find it in The Mighty's house."

Sovo was also curious as to what this place of worship might look like. The Mighty was an awful demon but temples usually were something beautiful to behold. To his disappointment Sovo found when they got there that this one certainly was not.

From afar one could easily mistake it for a giant cub of grey clay. While it was of an impressive size, easily the volume of three Ilyian apartment complexes, it was nothing special to look at either inward or outward. The door, wooden but painted grey, was wide open and the layer of snow in the large main room was as thick as it was on the ground outside. From this and from the decrepitude of the inner walls, one could see that the place had been abandoned for a long time.

With Hamin as their guide, they explored the building. First they went down corridors along which were many little rooms which looked more like holding cells than the ones they had seen at the prison. They thoroughly searched each one but found no Djeen – and no food.

The next and last place they searched was a small backroom behind the main hall. In it was nothing but a stone altar covered in dry blood. Also the floor and walls had been tainted by the dark red liquid.

"Here's where the animal sacrifices took place," Hamin explained. "As you can see, it was used a lot."

"Must have given a lot of meat," Sovo said with his mouth salivating at the very thought. "You don't think there could be any of it left around? Salted and dried?"

"Oh, no!" Hamin chuckled. "We didn't get to eat the meat. It belonged to The Mighty so it was taken away and buried in front of another altar."

"But you said there was always famine?"

"There was. And this is one of the reasons why."

Finding neither of what they were looking for, they went back to the main room and sat down in the snow to rest. Hamin served them some cold infusion made from a local plant. The taste was sweet but slightly spicy, almost giving the illusion that the beverage was hot.

"If Djeen isn't here", Hamin pondered, "and if he's not in the city then my guess is that he's hiding somewhere in the nearby woods. Tomorrow we should... Watch out!"

Hamin was suddenly on top of Sovo. The white tip of an arrow was protruding from his neck. Blood sprayed onto the young man's face as Hamin gasped for air. Shocked, Sovo pushed him aside and stood up. He looked in the direction the projectile had come from and saw a skeleton standing on the north side of the room. It was holding a bow made out of bones and between its ribs were stuck arrows, also made out of bones. The thing tipped its skull to the side as if it was studying the humans.

"Hamin, stay with me! Stay with me!"

Rahin was trying to stop the bleeding but it was not it which would kill him. His throat was crushed and his face was already turning blue.

Sovo pulled one of his fighting knives as the skeleton nocked its next arrow. The Toyanese's blade turned the creature to dust before it had a chance to shoot it. Enough time to let out a sigh of relief was all he got before he perceived movement in the corner of his eye. Something was rising out of the snow to his right, quickly but without a perceivable sound. It was another skeleton, this one had a serrated sword made out of thick white bone.

Others appeared, nine in total, and the three friends were encircled. Sovo drew his sword and killed the one charging towards him. He grabbed the bone sword, recited the short incantation Rahin had thought him and with the now blue-glowing weapon slew the skeleton coming up behind him.

Something white cut him across his left cheek but he had no time to attend to his stinging injury. Another bony Redeemed was on him. This one had a sword of steel so strong it broke both of Sovo's blade in two. He threw the mutilated metal blade at the creature and spun around to throw the bone one at another. Both Redeemed fell to dust at the same time. Sovo pulled another knife from his belt but as he looked around saw that there were no enemies left. Rahin had already taken care of the rest.

The sorceress kneeled beside the now deceased Hamin and put her head on his chest. She wept and wept and Sovo let her until he felt too nervous still standing in the temple.

"If these Redeemed rose up here, The Mighty must know our location. We should go before more come."

"We can't leave him here," she cried.

"We can't carry him with us. And what if he becomes a Re... Wait, something's wrong. Why didn't The Mighty use his body?"

"I used a spell to stop the demon from taking his remains."

"You can do that?"

"Apparently." Seeing his raised highbrow, she added with a sad smile: "It just... came to me."

Rahin looked at the corpse of the man who had been one of her closest friends for the last seven winters. She knew that this empty shell of flesh was not Hamin and found some comfort in the fact. Briefly, she thought of trying to reach him. But she knew too much grief made the process impossible. It was why she had only recently been in contact with her father and why she to this day could not reach her mother.

Rahin hated to admit it but Sovo was right. They needed to leave now or they might never make it back home. She picked up Hamin's walking stick, to have something left of him, and turned her back to the body lying in the snow.

"Alright", she said. "Let's get out of here while we still can."

### *

Stains of blood on the white snow. Djeen stared at them with the same empty feeling that had haunted him since the day he had seen Tomeer and his family die. He knew he should feel sorrow but felt nothing.

Next to the blood was the body of Hamin. Djeen had laid a blanket over him like he was a sleeping child. He thought of burying him but the idea of Hamin under a layer of dark earth made him feel oddly claustrophobic.

Not knowing what to do, Djeen lay down by Hamin's side. He stared up the grey ceiling of the temple and wondered what Rahin was up to. Last he had seen her she had been suturing the wound on Sovo's cheek. In the way she had touched him, apprehensive but tender, and in the shy way Sovo had accepted her care, Djeen had seen the mutual love that was growing between them. It had made him feel warm, happy for her, for an instant. Then he had seen that Hamin's walking stick was lying by her side and he had known something terrible had happened to him.

Djeen had thought of coming out of his hiding place high up in the tree branches and confront her about it. What had happened to their friend? Why had she not listened to his warning to not come looking for him? But he knew death followed wherever he went and decided to leave instead. Days later, he found Hamin's body in the temple and now here he was.

In the faint light of the setting sun coming in through the open temple doors, Djeen held up his arms. One was covered in thick burn scars, the other in a crimson rash eating at his skin. Both had become frail and thin from his lack of food. The sight gave him comfort. He knew he was getting increasingly weaker and that soon he would die.

This knowledge gave his spirit joy and a burst of energy. He felt suddenly compelled to take a walk around the temple. Going from room to room, his mood grew with each step. Then suddenly it became dark, like he was staring down an abyss prepared to swallow the whole world. His feelings altered, it felt, as often as he took a breath. He was going mad. But death would cure his insanity soon enough.

Djeen found himself in the sacrifice room. Finally exhausted, he lay down on top of the altar and gazed up at the ceiling. Dry blood splatter covered the grey surface. It was beautiful, he found. Like a painting.

His mind wandered to a faceless man's body. Muscular, taller than him and with strong arms which pinned him down with a delightful violence. He jerked off to the thought for a while but fell asleep with his cock in his hand before he could finish.

It was the next day when he woke up. He didn't know what part of the day but it did not matter. Hamin's body was still lying in the same spot and Djeen felt a sudden urge to get him out of here, out of this awful place where human happiness came to die.

He took the man's corpse in his arms and carried him to a clearing in the nearby woods. There he lay him down beneath a tree and sat next to him. He didn't feel like going back to the temple, finding this place far more beautiful. If he was going to die, he might as well have something pretty to look at while he did.

Days passed. He did not move. Mostly he slept, a shallow and restless sleep. Then came the dream.

Blood. The sight of it spraying the rock. Screams. A child's. A woman's. Tomeer trying to fight off the Redeemed but the swing of an axe brings him down. His skull split, brain matter splattering on Djeen's face.

The Mighty laughs. Anguish and rage, these two feelings so intertwined in Djeen that he can't tell them apart, rise inside of him and with it the fire. He frees himself from The Mighty's grasp but the demon punches him back down. Djeen jumps up and kicks him in the head, knocking the silver mask unto the floor. He sticks his fingers inside the skull's empty eye sockets and lets the flames rage out of him. The Mighty's robe burns up, the skull darkens. Laughter echoes from the demon. Louder and louder. Darkness falls.

Djeen sat up with a jolt. Sweat was running down his back although snow was falling all around him. Hamin's corpse was still lying there as cold and stiff as the ice hills that grew by the lakes of this land of death.

"Everything I touch..." Djeen murmured to himself.

Overcome by a sudden rage, he threw his fire at the surrounding trees. Made them burn and crumble until there was nothing left of them. Then he stood there and gazed at the grey ashes and white snow swirling in a whirlwind around him. A realisation came over him.

"... turns to ashes."

He smiled.

### *

"You're messing with me, right?"

Rahin patted the front leg of the Ogre Plain Locust and looked with fascination up at the green creature. She had thought she would never get to see one other than in book drawings. The size of three horses and with the appetite to match, they had been hunted nearly into extinction by farmers sick of losing half their crops to these hungry insects.

"Nope," Vayl said. "But surprising, isn't it? I didn't even know there were any left."

Rahin looked into the eyes of the beast, who bent down its head and rubbed it against hers. She knew Vayl was telling the truth, she had recognised Chunky. Once she knew a creature's soul, she recognised it always and regardless of the being's outer appearance.

"How did it happen? And this?" She asked baffled and nodded towards the pasture where about a hundred ogre locusts were grazing.

"Well, it started with Chunky. He made himself a cocoon and disappeared into it for about ten days. We all thought he was going to come out as a butterfly or something but we got an ogre locust. Once we learned that's what the shitworms become, the sorceress sisters, Gunn and Gann y'know, came up with these potions and spells to make them grow faster and now here we are."

"So, how do they taste?"

"Awful! Their flesh's dry as the Toyanese desert, crumbles in your mouth like you're eating sand. Good thing we're not raising them for meat."

Vayl picked another cob of corn from the basket they were holding and fed it to Chunky, who swallowed the whole thing in one bite. The sight made Rahin hungry. She hadn't eaten anything since arriving back at camp the previous night and food was all she could think about.

"So... Why are we keeping them exactly?"

"Oh, I though you... You see these spiky things on the back of their legs? And those sharp mandibles up there? Those can shop a person's legs in half without effort. Wrap some of that magic blue metal around them and these babies can kill a hundred Redeemed before even getting a scratch."

"Wow. I didn't think we were gone that long but things sure have changed around here."

After leaving Vayl by the pasture, Rahin returned to her tent where Sovo was still sound asleep beneath the covers. The eyebrows of the few people still awake when they had returned had been raised by the fact that they had gone to the same bed. But neither Rahin nor Sovo had been bothered to care. Exhausted and hungry after their fruitless search for Djeen, they had wanted nothing else but to finally rest.

"Wake up," she whispered gently in Sovo's ear. "Breakfast's ready."

He opened one eye at the word "breakfast" and smiled cheekily at her. She gave him the bowl of porridge she had brought from the kitchens and they shared their first real meal in over forty days. Rahin closed her eyes and focused on the sweetness of the dried fruit, the crunchiness of the hazelnuts, the softness of the boiled oats.

"So good to finally eat something that doesn't taste like dry woodchips," Sovo said once the bowl was empty.

"Yes, and to feel full! I swear I thought I was going to go mad with hunger. Still could go for a little bit of sweetness, though."

Rahin put her hand beneath the blanket, on Sovo's upper thigh. She caressed her way upwards, touched his cock which was already getting hard. It was of an impressive size, which she liked. She had never gotten why so many women felt the need to lie about the importance of the size of a man's tool. Maybe it was to spare those less lucky from a cruel truth. But life was cruel and she made no excuses for her preferences.

Sovo kissed her lips, licked her neck, nibbled gently but passionately on her ear. She played with his erection with one hand and with the other guided his hand to her buttocks, which he grabbed with violent enthusiasm.

"You in there?"

Silvi's voice intruding on their intimacy. Rahin let out a frustrated sigh into Sovo's neck and let go of his member.

"Yes. What is it?"

"Meeting in the main tent. Liva told me to tell you."

Reluctantly, Rahin went to the soap and water basin at the other end of the tent. One couldn't just walk into an important meeting with the smell of cock on your hand. She stared longingly at Sovo as he got out of bed to put on his clothes. There was something charmingly awkward in the way he did it. Like many people from the southern parts of the Toyanese desert, he had worn very little clothing during his life and he still wasn't quite used to it.

"Let's try this again tonight," she said and gave him a kiss on the lips. "When everybody's asleep they'll be less eager to interrupt."

The attendants at the meeting were the usual ones: Rahin, Liva, Sovo, Teok and Silvi as well as the half a dozen men who had been named generals over the Red Kingdom army. Only Djeen wasn't here, and of course Hamin.

Although the King was missing, things had gone surprisingly well without him. Or at least not as bad as they could have.

"We've won a number of battles on the eastern front," Liva explained. "but we've suffered many casualties in the south, where we still need more soldiers. We were thinking of sending Silvi and a number of her enchanted men. Twenty-thousand, at minimum."

As she spoke, she moved small wooden figurines on a map. It made it look like one of those role playing war games young people were so found of, which made Rahin feel uncomfortable. Those little carved wood pieces represented real people, so many individuals whose lives lay in their hands.

"Fortunately," Liva went on, "we've been able to catch a break due to the unexpected turn of events in the last fourteen days. For those of you who have just re-joined us: the attacks from The Mighty's army have significantly decreased. They're about half as frequent as they used to be."

"Do you know why?" Rahin asked.

"No. While we enjoy the respite, we fear it might mean The Mighty is planning something new. Something big we're maybe not prepared for."

The meeting went on until midday, after which Sovo and Rahin began to prepare for the journey which awaited them. A decision had been reach that they would accompany Silvi and Teok along with twenty-thousand enchanted soldiers to the far-south. Sovo hoped to take the opportunity to check on his tribe.

"I can't wait to introduce you to my father," he said. "I know he'll love you."

Rahin had to hold back tears when she saw the proud look in his eyes. No man had ever openly claimed her as his lover and while she had some doubts Sovo's father would be thrilled about her relationship with his son, she knew Sovo would defend her no matter what.

Once everything which had to be done had, they decided to go back to bed to rest – and enjoy each other's bodies before sleeping. Over them, the sky had already turned dark although it was still early, as it did here in the north during wintertime. Rahin was about to follow Sovo under the sheets when she heard the familiar sound of a daya's shriek. Recognizing it as a cry of distress, she put her clothes back on and went outside.

The bird crash-landed in the middle of the camp and she realised the beast was injured, as was the man riding it. He rolled off the daya's back and staggered towards her. She caught him in her arms as he collapsed.

"They're coming!" He screamed, spitting out blood.

"Who's coming? The Redeemed?"

"No! No! Worse! So much worse! You cannot defeat them! Not these monsters!"

Blood was pouring from a wound in his abdomen. Rahin thought of putting pressure on it but saw that guts were spilling out of him and she knew it was too late.

"From the east," he said with the little strength he had left. "They came from the east to Cladda."

The man began to cry. He buried his face in her chest and sobbed like a child to his mother. Rahin held and rocked him gently, comforted him as best she could while he took his last breaths beneath the cold, blue winter moon.

### *

"What shall we tell the King when we find him?"

"Tell him a new enemy has risen," Rahin said. "One more terrible than all those we have faced before, one that we cannot defeat without him. Oh, and give him this."

She removed the bow-and-arrow shaped pendant from around her neck and gave it to the soldier who was to lead the expedition in the search for Djeen. The woman accepted it with a nod and an Ilyian salute.

Next Rahin checked on Sovo, who was as planned to travel south with Silvi's enchanted army. More than anything Rahin would have wanted to stay by his side but she knew she was needed here to fight these strange new foes.

"Remember to not skip any meals," she told him. "You always get so distracted and you forget to eat. You need all your strength in battle."

"I'm off to fight an army of the dead, my love. I think I can take care of myself."

Rahin couldn't help but blush when she heard him call her my love. It made her feel so warm inside she almost could have forgotten the icy cold around them. She also knew he needed no such mothering on her part but she had wanted to say something, anything, to keep him near for just a moment longer. But they eventually had to let each other go and she saw him off as he marched away with the rest of the southern expedition.

Vayl was wanting for her with two dayas outside of the camp when she was finally ready to leave. They flew to their destination south-east, beyond the village of Cladda where the new enemies had first struck. Mertums, the northerners had called them after the malevolent spirits that according to the myths of the northern tribes caused everything from plagues and miscarriages to ugliness and erectile dysfunction.

The scouts of the Red Kingdom army had tracked their location to an abandoned state granary previously used to store crops taxed by the Empire. When the Golden Emperor's rule had ended, the people had taken back what was rightfully theirs and emptied the building and it had been standing vacant until now.

To avoid detection, Rahin and Vayl landed their birds in a patch of forest and walked the last bit to the hill from below which they could spy on the granary.

Both Redeemed and mertums were guarding it, they found, and there seemed to be a lot happening. Wagons carrying Spirit knew what were constantly entering and leaving. Rahin used a spyglass to try and solve the mystery but the thick metal covers on the wagons made it impossible to get even a peek inside.

On the other hand, she got a better look at the mertums. Their appearance was quite similar to the drawings that had been made of them but seeing them in real life was far more unsettling.

They were tall creatures, about two and a half times longer than a person. Their skins were light blue like the sky and looked smooth like a baby's. As they were all in the nude, one could see that they had no hair anywhere on their bodies and completely lacked any kind of genitalia, which begged the question of how they reproduced.

Most of all, it was their eyes which interested Rahin. Dark blue they were but unlike a human's they had no irises, pupils or eye whites. It was all the same colour and reminded her of a calm lake at night. Behind this illusion of calmness, though, she could sense a great turmoil.

"How many soldiers you think we need to take on this place?" Vayl wondered.

"Two thousand, at least. Ten for each of our enemies."

Through trial and error, Red Kingdom soldiers had figured out how to kill mertums: they needed to be struck by the same magic weapons used on the Redeemed but harder and on average ten times before they were destroyed. But with the blue ghouls being of superior speed and strength than even the Redeemed, a human rarely survived long enough to do it and the loses of life for the Red Kingdom army had been immense.

"Then there's the question of what's inside that granary. Could be ten times more of these creatures and that would turn the whole thing into a suicide mission."

"Maybe what's in these wagons could be a clue of what's in the building. Each has only two or three guards."

They decided to follow a wagon and attack it when the opportunity arose. The one they picked was protected by only two guards, neither of which was a mertum. Rahin and Vayl, on top of their dayas, stalked it through the north countryside until they were far enough from the granary that they would not alarm any more enemies.

Rahin nocked three arrows, aimed and shot. Two arrows killed each one of the Redeemed sitting in the front, the third annihilated one of the Redeemed horses pulling the wagon. One was left but a fourth arrow took care of it and after rolling for a bit the wagon came to a halt.

The two friends landed their birds nearby and began to inspect it. The metal doors at the back were sealed with a heavy lock. Vayl broke it with their sword and they both peeked inside.

A total of eight cages were in, four on each side. In each were three mertums, crammed so close together they could hardly move. Around their hands and feet were heavy chains, which told Rahin The Mighty could not control them like he did the Redeemed.

"Fuck," Vayl said. "It's just more of these monsters. Hardly of use to us."

"Maybe. I need to check something."

She climbed inside and kneeled next to the closest cage. The dark eyes of a mertum met hers and she put a hand on its forehead.

"What are you..."

"Shh," she said both to her companion and to the creature she was trying to understand.

She closed her eyes and focused on the energy coming from the mertum. A jolt of pain went through her body and she reeled back.

"Rahin!" Vayl exclaimed and jumped into the wagon. "What's wrong?"

"It's in pain," she said and looked around at the other mertums. Gazed a long moment into their eyes. "They all are, all the time. It's a design flaw, I think."

"Design flaw?"

"Yes. Spirit whispers to me that these beings are made by The Mighty himself. But he doesn't know what he's doing and can only create pain and misery."

"Do you know how he makes them?"

"No, but it must take place in that granary."

"I know how he makes them," a woman's voice said.

Vayl and Rahin looked around, confused as to where it had come from. Noise was heard from beneath the wagon and a young woman emerged in front of the opened doors. Her large blue-green eyes were the first thing that struck Rahin, then how emaciated she appeared .

"I can tell you everything that happens in that building. I just have one request."

"What is it?" Rahin asked.

"Please don't hurt my child."

"Your child?" They both said and saw that she was looking past them and smiling.

One of the mertums smiled back at her.

### *

"Ziryn," she told them when asked what her name was.

She spoke with her mouth half-full. Now on her third bowl of stew, she showed no sign of slowing down.

"So, Ziryn," Liva said, "where do you come from?"

"Gateern, a village also in the north but not in these parts. Towards the west."

She helped herself to some of the bread on the table and shoved half a roll in her mouth.

"That's where I'd lived my whole life when the Midwife came," she mumbled.

"The Midwife?"

"Yes, that's what they call her. Don't know her real name. She's the one who comes to the villages and recruits women to this. But she doesn't tell you what it's really about. No, no... You'd never go if you knew."

"What is it that she tells you?"

"Oh," Ziryn said with a blissful expression on her face, like someone reminiscing about a beautiful dream they once had. "You should hear her talk. She speaks words of hope and liberty and of the bright future that awaits if we truly submit to him."

"The Mighty?"

"No, of course not. No sane person would follow a messenger of the ruler of the dead. My village is quite isolated but we hear about what's happening in the world. We know of the ongoing war against the Redeemed and of the Shadow Kingdom's heroic resistance towards The Mighty. No, no... The Midwife says she comes on behalf of the Red King."

Rahin gasped in indignation. The enemy was out there tricking people by pretending to be on their side. More than ever, she wished Djeen was here. He wouldn't let this stand. He would clear his name and save his people.

"The Midwife," Ziryn continued, "says that the King is going to create a legacy, a large family of princes and princesses who will extend his rule beyond the ages. For that he needs wives from all over the Kingdom, from all different backgrounds. That's why we went with her: to meet the King and hopefully be picked by him to carry his children, his legacy."

Ziryn sighed and chugged down the rest of the stew. She pushed the empty bowl away, rested her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. She sighed again and shook her head.

"It was all a lie. But by the time we figured that out, we were encircled by Redeemed and could not escape. They put us in these little holding cells with hay on the ground, four or five of us in each. Looked like horse stalls. They chained us and only took us out when it was time to deliver the babies or, you know, to make them."

"How..." Liva hesitated. She didn't know if there was a sensible way to ask the question.

"How did he impregnate us?" Ziryn filled in for her. "Believe it or not, he wasn't directly involved in the process. The Redeemed would take us to a room where there's this big tiled pool full of a strange oily liquid which shifts between purple and blue. And when you're in it, it moves in a way that feels like it's s purposely... caressing you. I don't really know how to explain. You have to experience it yourself to understand.

After they've made us bathe, things happen quickly. First you get a stomach ache, in the lower abdomen. You get swollen and the belly grows and grows and the pain grows with it till you're in so much agony you can barely stay conscious. Five days after the bath, the babies come out. I say babies because there rarely only one. Usually it's between three and five at the time, from the same woman. They're small, maybe the third of the size of a human new-born. But they grow fast, so fast. Fourteen days is usually all it takes before they're fully grown. Then they're taken away. To be trained, I heard."

"Trained?"

"Yes, they're not vicious by nature. They have to be made that way. Please believe me when I tell you, they can be good if only you give them a chance."

Ziryn put her hand on Liva's and looked at her with tearful eyes. Liva felt a sting of guilt. Earlier in the day she had ordered the mertums in the wagon killed as a precaution. Only the one Ziryn claimed was her child had been spared but Liva had thought of killing it once they had gotten the information they needed from the woman. As for now, it was kept in a cage in a cellar and heavily guarded.

"What I don't understand," Liva said to change the subject, "is how you managed to get out of there. It seems unlikely anyone would come out alive of such a place. How do we know The Mighty didn't set it up for us to find you?"

"Because after all that monster put me through I would not lift even a finger to help him," Ziryn said clearly offended by Liva's insinuations. "The way I got out was that we trained one of the mertums to break things for us. Our children would stay in the stalls with us until they were fully grown. This morning when I got out, we had it free us from our chains and the other women climbed on each other's shoulders to make a human ladder. I'd been chosen to climb it to the top because I was the smallest one and the most likely to squeeze myself through the small window high up on the wall. Since the cells are far down into a basement, the window wasn't that far above the ground. I just had to crawl out and cling unto the underside of one of the wagons. I picked the closest one I could find, not knowing one of my own children was in it. I only found out when I saw your friends inspecting its inside.

This is how it happened. Believe me or don't. Either way, why would The Mighty let someone out to inform his enemies about his nurseries?"

"Nurseries? As in, there's more than one?"

"I'm afraid so. Some of the other women had been in similar facilities before being transferred to the one I was at. From what I'm told, there's others like it all over the world, all the way down into the desert lands."

The last words sent a chill down Liva's spine. She had a few days earlier gotten a letter from her mother informing her that her cousin, along with three other young women, had left the tribe without a word. It wasn't unusual for young people to travel the land in groups to search for potential spouses but they would always tell their loved ones about it. Could her cousin and her friends have met this so-called Midwife and followed her?

"Thank you, Ziryn. I'm sorry if I've offended you. We just need to be careful since we're dealing with such a deceitful enemy. Is there anything you need?"

"Could I see Bulla, please?"

Bulla was the name she had given to her child, the mertum, and ever since they had been separated she had made the same incessant request. Liva signalled to one of the soldiers standing guard by the door to come to her.

"Take her to the mertum," she told him in a low voice. "She can go near it but don't let that thing out of the cage under any circumstances."

Ziryn lit up with gratitude and followed the man out. Liva then turned to Rahin and Vayl, who had brought in the woman.

"Well, that answers what these ghouls are. Damn, I shouldn't have had those other ones killed. They could have been useful."

"Useful?" Vayl asked surprised.

"Yes. Didn't you hear? The mertums can be trained. If we're going to win this war we've got to use that to our advantage. And of course we need to find that woman, that... Midwife."

### *

There were two kids up in a tree at the edge of the camp. Gazing through spyglasses they were trying to get a look at the scene taking place out on the snow-covered plain. Vayl had noticed them and thought of shouting to them to piss off but figured they were too far away to get hurt if the mertum got loose. With about fifteen skilled bowmen standing by, Bulla wouldn't have the time to come anywhere near the camp anyway.

"Is that really necessary? All these soldiers are making him nervous," Ziryn said referring to Bulla, who she had for unknown reason determined was a he.

"That's unfortunate but we can't be too careful. Go ahead and open the door."

Ziryn let Bulla out of the cage wagon the half-demon was locked in. Having a need to stretch up after being crammed in for so long, the mertum stood up with all his impressive size and raised his arms above his head. The sight sent a chill down Vayl's spine. More than once they had seen fierce warriors torn to pieces by the blue ghouls and they knew they wouldn't stand a chance if ever the mertum got close enough to attack.

At Liva's orders, and despite Ziryn's protests, Bulla had not been fed for days. The expectation was that he would kill the goat they had brought along, at which point Vayl would shout an order and then give him a reward in form of a big piece of chicken meat. If the process was repeated enough times, Bulla would eventually associate the order with killing and then reward. Or that was the plan, anyway.

But Bulla did not even notice the goat. Instead the mertum stayed close to his mother and stared up at the sky as if confused to see it after being locked up for so long.

To help, Ziryn pointed out the animal to Bulla who finally saw it. With cautious steps, he approached it, kneeled beside it and stroke one of its long white horns. The goat did not appreciate the curiosity and vigorously shook its head before ramming its horn in the mertum's chest.

Vayl stood ready to shout the words "go kill" as Bulla attacked but he did not. Instead he sat a moment and stared surprised at the goat before proceeding to gently pet its back.

Ziryn gave Vayl a triumphant I-told-you-so-look and the soldiers standing around gave them one of disapproval. Nearly everyone at camp was against keeping mertums around and had only tolerated it because of the leaders' insistence that they could be trained.

"Back when I was a kid in Ily," Vayl pondered out loud, "I knew this guy who organised dog fights I used to go to and sell snacks to the attendants. Also steal from pockets. Anyway, this guy could turn the sweetest pooches you'd ever met into the meanest killers. He just needed to awaken their aggression... with a little bit of beating."

"I will sooner rip the lungs right out of your chest before I let you lay a hand on my Bulla!"

"Calm down," Vayl said and held back Ziryn, who had stood up on her toes to growl in their face. "I didn't mean him. We're already promised you we won't hu..."

The words stuck in Vayl's throat as they saw the mertum standing up and walking with quick steps towards them. The bowmen released their arrows. Ziryn cried out for them to stop. Vayl hoped the half-demon would be hit enough times to fall to dust but something like a powerful wind took the projectiles away before they found their target.

"Stop that!" Djeen said, suddenly standing with a bosom full of arrows in front of the mertum and his mother, who had put her arms around Bulla to protect him.

"You're alive!" Vayl exclaimed.

"Of course I'm alive," the King said and smiled. "We've got a war to win."

## Chapter Eight

The morning light shined softly through the branches of the pine trees. The air was fresh, reinvigorating and as she opened her eyes Neeva felt a short but blissful moment of inner peace.

"What's happening?" She heard one of the girls say and she realized the trees weren't moving past the window of the carriage.

Suddenly frustrated she looked at the three young women who were the latest unwitting recruits to The Mighty's breeding program. Not for the first time, she felt annoyed that He didn't forcefully abduct women for this. In the latest village she had been to, half of the population had been women of fertile age but still only one had followed her. How much more He could expand His righteous army if only He took what He had a right to.

Neeva shook her head, she must not question the Creator's perfect wisdom. She held no right to challenge His decisions, especially after the great mercy He had shown her.

Now fully awake, she put on her knit cap and mittens and stepped out to see why the carriage had stopped. The coachman was cussing and swearing like a northern marauder, she could hear him before she saw him. In the middle of the dirt path a tree had fallen. A layer of pine needles was lying all around it, bright green on fresh white snow. She thought maybe it was the work of beavers but she then remembered that they rarely left their dens in such cold weather. She looked by the side of the road at the stomp of the tree and saw that it had been cut clean, as with a large saw.

Realising the situation, she turned back to climb into the carriage but was stopped by a woman landing in front of her as if out of the sky. A rag with a strong, burning stench was shoved in Neeva's face and then she was in a dark basement smelling of dirt and potatoes.

"Strange, isn't it?" The woman said. "After this stuff knocks you out it feels like no time has passed at all."

Neeva saw her leaning against the wall close to her. It was the same Toyanese woman she had seen by the carriage. She was slim and rather small but next to her was another woman. This one was tall and Neeva thought there was something rough about her face.

"What is this place? Who are you people?" Neeva asked and tried to move only to discover that she was tied with heavy cords to a chair.

"You don't know us," the smaller one said. "But we know you very well. We've been searching for you for quite some time. What is your real name, by the way? I assume Midwife is not it."

"What is it to you?"

"Neeva," the tall woman said and gazed straight into her eyes, sending chills down her spine.

"See," the other said. "You might as well tell us everything. She can read your thoughts anyhow."

"Then why bother asking?"

The smaller woman was taken aback by the question but the mind-reader smiled.

"Truth is," she said, "I don't have complete control over it. Sometimes it doesn't work when I want it to, sometimes I hear thoughts I would have preferred not to know about. But it is in your best interest to tell us what we need to know. My friend Liva here tends to get impatient when she doesn't get her way. It can make her a little... punchy."

Liva cracked her knuckles to accentuate her friend's point. In her eyes was an eagerness to get to work.

"Although, that doesn't scare you. I can see it. You are too familiar with pain to care. We could threaten you with something worse. But what is this relief I sense in you at the thought of death? What is this weight in your soul that you long so much to be released from? Guilt, I sense it. What awful thing have you d..."

"Stop that!" Neeva cried. "What is it you want? You haven't even told me yet."

"What we want," the woman said as she knelt in front of her and looked into her with those incessantly searching eyes, "is the location of every one of The Mighty's nurseries. Give us that and we'll let you go."

Neeva scoffed and cast back her head. Spiders had weaved ghostly pale webs on all corners of the room, she saw. Once, the sight would have terrified her but that was back when things of this world could still scare her. She knew of much greater horrors now.

"I will not tell you anything", she said and stared right back into the woman's eyes. "I will not betray my Creator. Do with me what you will."

"Creator?" The mind-reader said, not missing a beat. "You do not really believe that, Neeva. Deep down you know the truth but you have convinced yourself that if you try hard enough you can force yourself to believe otherwise. Your Mighty is not a god, not your father from Heaven..."

"Quiet! I will not listen to this blasphemy!"

"Oh, you won't? Then walk away. Cover your ears. Can't? Good, because I will make you listen to the truth whether you like it or not." She came closer, held Neeva's chin and forced her to look up into her eyes. "The Mighty cannot save you. Not from death, not from hopelessness or a lack of purpose. He cannot forgive you your transgressions or fix what you broke. You're on your own, kid. No one can save you."

The woman grabbed her captive's head and Neeva felt an excruciating pain rushing through it. Suddenly, she saw herself standing above herself. Rage and hatred like she had never seen before shone in her gaze as she smashed a brick against her victim's temple with all her strength. Neeva felt her skull fracture and open. Blood filled her eyes until she could no longer see.

It all disappeared in an instant and she was lying in the delivery room of one of the nurseries. She felt a deep pain from her stomach and saw that it was swollen. Here was the shape of a small foot under her skin, there the contour of a little mertum's hand. The monsters were moving inside of her with great excitement, eager to get out.

"Help me," she croaked to the other Neeva, who was now standing by the bed.

But her pleas went unanswered as Midwife Neeva turned away and walked out of the room.

One of the unborn mertums pressed its face against the inside of her stomach. She saw and felt her skin get sucked into its mouth. Sharp, grey teeth pierced through and a chunk of her flesh was ripped out. All she could do was watch and scream in agony as the mertum stuck its head out of her bleeding abdomen and crawled towards her face.

Then she was back in the basement that smelled of dirt and potatoes. Neeva could hear a woman cry hysterically. She realised it was herself but could not stop. The horror of what she had lived through stuck to her like burning mud.

The two women were still there, staring at her. Liva seemed distressed.

"Heavens... Rahin," she said , "What did you do to her?"

The sorceress looked coldly at Neeva as she answered:

"Nothing she didn't already do to herself."

### *

Liva remembered days of her childhood when during the hottest season the sand and rocks felt like embers beneath the feet, when the air became so stuffy all one wanted was to sleep until night came and you could breathe again. In those days, what a blessing it had been to walk high up into Red Blood Mountain and bathe in the Spirit Pools, thus named because her people believed they were a gift from Heaven itself.

Large enough for one or two persons to sit in, they were full of water which looked a dark red because of the stone below. For this reason they were also called Rock Bleed Pools, as a reference to a South Toyanese proverb: "Water is the blood of mountains".

The Spirit Pool Liva was looking at now was filled with nether water nor blood. Instead it was the same vile liquid that she had seen at other Nurseries and where the seeds to the mertums swam around, invisible to the naked eye. If you kept observing it, you could perceive shifts in colour and even a certain movement below the surface, like a force was moving around softly enough to not disturb the peacefulness of the pool.

Having found this disturbing sight, Liva knew from Neeva's description that they were near their goal. She searched her surrounding with her eyes and found what she was looking for.

"There", she said to Vayl and pointed, "behind that boulder over there is where the entrance should be".

With the help of a couple of trained mertums, they moved it out of the way and found as expected the entry to the Nursery. Twenty soldiers, each leading a mertum on a leash, were sent in first. Many orders of "protect" were heard as Redeemed and enemy mertums clashed with the Red Kingdom warriors. Vayl and Liva came in after and went to the right through narrow tunnels and into the room where the women were being held in about thirty small wooden crates.

"Sana!" Liva called as she began to wedge open the doors with her sword.

"Liva?" She heard a feeble voice say. "Is that you?"

She ran to the crate it was coming from and broke open the door. Inside were six women holding mertum children of varying ages. Among the group was one person Liva recognised.

"Sana, my dear cousin, are you okay?"

Her relative stared up at her like she wasn't sure if she should believe her eyes or if it was all too good to be true. In her arms were three small mertums about the size of a toddler each, which told Liva they weren't very old, perhaps born the same or the previous day.

"You must hurry," she said. "There are soldiers with sand dragons at the foot of the mountain. They will take you home to your villages. All of you, hurry!"

Sana seemed to finally wake from her mental slumber and crawled out with the other women.

Vayl was still in the process of opening all the doors and was dripping with sweat. Liva help them finish the job and once every woman had been freed, they both ran back outside. There, Liva tossed the little bag of magic herbs Rahin had given her into the Spirit Pool. The water quickly lost its strange colour and went back to normal. According to the sorcerer who had created the mixture the water would now be pure enough to drink, although Liva had no desire to try it out.

She looked down the mountain to see if she saw Sana somewhere among the women fleeing. By the dry shrub covered foothill is where she found her with the three mertum children still hanging on to their mother.

Reassured for the moment, Liva unsheathed her sword and ran back inside to join in the fighting. Only a handful of enemies remained and the Red Kingdom mertums finished the job quickly.

Full of unspent excitement, Liva put her energy into running down the mountainside. When she arrived at the bottom of it a warrior from her tribe informed her that he had seen Sana and that she had left ahead. Liva and Vayl got on the back of a dragon and set off back to her village.

They arrived later in the day. Women were cooking the evening soup or bathing children who soon would begrudgingly be put to bed. The smell of spices and boiled lizard meat made Liva hungry but she took no time to stop and eat. Instead she went straight to her aunt's tent.

There she found Sana lying asleep on her mattress surrounded by women from her family. Liva's mother smiled sadly when she saw her daughter and moved a cushion so she could come sit close to her.

"How is she doing?" Liva asked worried.

"Not good," her mother whispered. "She's very weak. We gave her... the drink but it doesn't seem to work for these kinds of pregnancies."

The drink was what women called the concoction of wild flowers and roots used to terminate a gestation. Almost all women of the southern Toyanese desert knew about it and how to make it but it was still too taboo to be given a name. The drink was something always spoken about in whispers and never if a man was around.

"I didn't even realise she was pregnant again. She must have given birth just one, two days ago. How is this even possible?"

"Who knows? But this Mighty doesn't seem to give the mothers of his children must respite. Not even breeding cattle is treated like this."

Sana was awakened by sudden pain. She screamed and touched her stomach. It was quite swollen, which it hadn't been when Liva had seen her earlier. The mertums inside of her were as usual growing at an alarming rate.

Liva cast a look at the three mertums kept in a chicken cage in a corner of the tent. Already at that age they were strong enough that they could have broken the thick wooden bars without effort. But still they sat there obediently, staring back at her with those big eyes the colour of midnight.

Sana cried out again. Her sister held her hand and sang a comforting lullaby while their mother bathed Sana's forehead with a wet towel.

The light coming in through the opening of the tent was slowly dying. Night-time would soon be here.

### *

The peaceful expression on Sovo's face as he slept annoyed Rahin. She wondered how he could be so calm knowing what would happen the next day when his father, who had been away on diplomatic business with other tribe leaders, would return. Sovo had insisted the old man would accept her but she had a dreadful feeling that he was far too optimistic about his father's open-mindedness.

Restless with worry, the sorceress decided to take a walk around the village. She put only a wraparound skirt around her waist as she was unlikely to meet anyone outside. It was customary for people here to wear a minimal amount of closing, even the women walked around bare-breasted. But Rahin had been raised in the city of Toyan, where people were a lot more prude, and she felt uncomfortable with showing that much skin.

Outside the temperature was a bit low but Rahin didn't mind. After the torturous heat of the day, the contrast gave her relief. She looked out into the desert where the light of the moon and the stars illuminated the scenery just enough that she could distinguish the shape of rocks and cacti. On the horizon, the small mountain the locals called The Giant's Big Toe looked like a bread bun turned black from being left in the oven for too long.

Somewhere beyond it was Liva, watching over her cousin's body. Rahin felt a shill down her spine when she thought about what happened when a woman died while pregnant with mertums. She had unfortunately witnessed it first-hand several times: even with their mother dead, they continued to grow until time had come for them to be born. At which point they would eat themselves out of the woman's corpse. If the body had been buried, they would dig themselves out of the ground.

It was to spare her family of this spectacle that Liva had taken Sana's remains away to guard them until "the little blue parasites", as she called them, had come out. Truly, it wasn't a task the sorceress envied her.

"You must be Rahin."

She had never before seen the man she saw when she turned around but because of the pink and purple clay that covered his braids, she knew immediately who he was. He didn't look like she had imagined. She had pictured him shorter and frailer, perhaps because it was how her own father had been. But Garaytan was tall and had retained an impressive amount of muscle for his advanced age. She could see the resemblance between father and son and imagined he looked how Sovo would one day.

"Ye-yes", she stuttered nervously.

"I always feared this," Garaytan said and Rahin's heart dropped like a stone. "I've long had a feeling Sovo wouldn't be content with what was offered here and would seek a woman from a distant land."

"Toyan isn't that far away," Rahin chuckled. She rubbed the back of her neck, silently cursing herself for her awkwardness.

"The Ilyian colonizers may not be able to tell apart sand from a cactus but we both know our cultures are very different. Isn't that a source of pride where you come from?"

He was referring to the fact that many from the big city of Toyan considered themselves superior, more evolved than the "primitives" living in tribes all around the desert lands.

"Some see it that way, yes. But I don't. Truth be told, I have been away from Toyan for so long that I don't see it as home anymore. With both my parents gone, I have nothing calling me back there now."

She couldn't read any expression on his face and it made her anxious. Briefly, she thought about reaching out to try and read his soul but she was too jittery and couldn't concentrate well enough to do it.

"You would live among us, then? Because Sovo isn't going to leave his tribe."

"Oh, he has made that very clear. I know he regards his mission with the outmost seriousness. And yes, I would. After all I've been through with this war, I wouldn't mind living in a peaceful place like this one."

"Oh, it isn't always this calm," Garaytan said with a sudden and warm smile. "Stay here long enough and you'll know in detail about all the little quarrels between people. Regardless, if you are prepared to live the rest of your life with us then I welcome you."

He bowed to show her respect and Rahin could hardly believe it. This hadn't gone at all like she had imagined.

"Really? I mean... thank you. I'm sorry, I just thought it might bother you that..."

"That you are a boy? No."

Being referred to as a boy made Rahin cringe with discomfort but she was at the same time relieved that he wasn't hostile like she had feared he would be.

"Or, well... truth be told," he added, "it might have bothered me if Sovo hadn't already had children with other women. I am a very old man, you see, and it gives me peace of mind to know that my succession is secured for the next two generations. But it is also because I am a very old man that I have met people of all kinds and ceased a long time ago to pass judgement on those who are different. Unless that difference is of harm to others, of course."

He cast a look at the young men unloading his belongings from the back of sand dragons. Something about the way they did it displeased him and he bowed to her again before running up to them to give them a lecturing.

Rahin returned to the tent she shared with Sovo and she slept like a baby until morning. She was awaken by the chanting of children as the sun rose up.

"Long live the King! He will smite all our enemies! Long live the King! The Mighty will tremble before him!"

Djeen was coming back from going alone into the desert to meditate. Doing this sort of things had become an habit of his lately and it wasn't unusual for him to be gone for up to seven days at a time.

As often upon his return, he went straight to get food. Rahin found him near a campfire, helping himself to some boiled beans and vegetables cooked by one of the village women. He ate as always like a dragon, devouring portions that would have made any normal person's stomach explode. And still, he was never bloated but his whole body had returned to being the hard mass of muscle it had previously been.

"There you are," Rahin said. "How did it go?"

"Good." There was serenity in his eyes but also a certain sadness. "I'm prepared now, to face The Mighty."

Rahin sat down by his side and made a weak attempt to smile. She knew what this meant and by the way Djeen had acted since returning from his homeland, she understood that he knew it too.

"But what about the sword, Djeen? You need it to defeat him."

"I know where the sword is."

"How?"

"Some things you just know," he said with an enigmatic smile. "It's like you can feel it inside of your bones."

She got what he meant and felt no need to ask anything else. He was ready. The question was if she was.

"Everything will be okay," he said as he saw her distress. "Soon The Mighty will be gone and this whole ordeal will be over."

Djeen put his hand on Rahin's shoulder and she began to sob. He put his arms around her and cried a few tears of his own. But underneath them, he was smiling.

"I could not have asked for a better friend and guide," he whispered in her ear. "When we finally gain victory, it will be because of you."

### *

Down the side of the hill and on the grassy plain, as far as the eyes could see, were people gathered. It was early spring and many had brought along blankets to sit on and food baskets. Citizens of the Shadow Kingdom had come from all over to hear the King speak.

Djeen rarely gave speeches and didn't seem to enjoy it much when he had to. But something about this time was special. He appeared unusually grave as he prepared himself and he had ordered a soldier to write down everything he said during the speech. He had also let it be known that he wanted it translated into every known language and spread to every corner of the Kingdom. Whatever he was about to say would be of the greatest importance.

Teok looked at the masses of people and reminisced the days when he had a people admire him this way, listening to his words with such attentiveness and obedience. One day he would have it again, he knew it. An exceptional man such as himself could not forever remain a simple soldier, a speck of dust among many others on the ground.

"I am not your king!"

Djeen had started to speak, in a voice so unnaturally loud it made it ring in Teok's ears. The people were confused by the King's statement and exchanged looks and whispers with each other.

"I am not your king!" Djeen repeated. "You have given me this title but nothing have I done to deserve it."

Loud protests came from the crowd. Djeen quieted them with a simple gesture of the hand and Teok burned with envy at the power he held over the public.

"Nothing that has been built under the Shadow Kingdom was built by me. You built the houses, forged the weapons and grew the ryda which is the greatest source of wealth of our nation. This wealth belongs not to me, but to you all.

One thing I will take credit for: I helped keep you safe from The Mighty. My inborn talent is that of destruction and for you I used it well.

I did my part but that does not make me superior to you, nor does it give me any right to rule over you like an emperor. I gave, yes. But did I give more to our nation than all the ones who fell fighting The Mighty's army? Did I give more than those who will never walk or never see again because of injuries sustained in the battles against our enemies? Did I give more than the mothers whose children never came home from war?

My gift is that of destruction, as I said. And now I go away to kill our greatest enemy: The Mighty. Once I leave today to face him, I will no longer be your King and your destinies will lie in your own hands. You will be free. Although, you were always free. All the world's wealth, all the world's prosperity was always within your reach. It was forever yours to take.

My wish is that you will take care of each other. That you will see that true riches is the love between people and that you will treat each other as siblings.

Let no one put chains around you again and let no one rule over another. Because there will always be those for who power trumps all. Some will try to take it through tyranny, others will claim to do it for love and the greater good. Be wary of all of them. A slave is a slave, whether his master whips him or rewards him with gifts.

So, I release you. I remove my yoke from your shoulders. May you never let another put theirs on you ever again."

Djeen stepped down from the rock he had been standing on while speaking and he walked away, turning his back to the crowd. Teok studied the people's faces. Many were cheering but many others seemed confused, almost frightened.

The man who had been King embraced his old friend Rahin. Tears were running down her cheeks. They exchanged a few words of which Teok only got the last sentence, spoken by Djeen:

"Take care, my dearest friend. Thank you for everything."

Teok watched Djeen climb on a daya, wave goodbye to all gathered and fly away. The two men had long grown apart, nether longer getting what the other had become. But Teok felt more than just a lack of understanding now. He felt hatred. Djeen had been given everything, all the power and admiration Teok craved, and he had thrown it all away.

For this brazen ingratitude, Teok longed to punish him. The fallen emperor promised himself as he saw his former friend disappear in the distant sky that if he ever got the chance, if he ever learned how, that he would kill Djeen.

### *

Djeen had not been to the capital since the day he had come to speak to the Emperor. Ily was a place which carried many dark memories for him and he only came here when it was absolutely necessary. The dying screams of both strangers and friends he had killed always came back to him whenever he approached the city's gates, which had now been painted grey.

A long, rectangular depression could be seen higher up, where the words "The Jewel of the World" had been carved away. Such a name was in The Mighty's view both blasphemy and idolatry.

Up on the wall all around the city were small booths where watchmen stood. From rapports Djeen knew this was something new. He wondered if they were there primarily to keep outsiders out or to keep the people of Ily inside. What was going on beyond these walls was a mystery as the city had been closed off from the rest of the world for at least a hundred days.

Djeen could not see if the guards were human or if they had become Redeemed but it did not matter. Since every little bird on a branch could be a dead one through which The Mighty spied on him, Djeen knew it was unlikely that he would get to him without being detected. He had taken this into account and made up his plan thereafter.

"Who goes there?" A loud voice came down from a speaking trumpet up the wall. "The city is forbidden to unbelievers. Leave at once or you will be forcibly removed."

Unbothered by the guard's threat, Djeen let his fists catch fire and threw flames which burned through the metal doors. It left a hole just about big enough for him to step through. When finally on the other side, he stood a moment in shock at the sight before him.

The once so lively city was deadly calm. All the great buildings that used to struck visitors with awe were now nothing but ruins and everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Except for the shouting of the guards, he heard no one speak and he saw no one.

Arrows came flying at him from above but could not even put a scratch on his skin. So, he ignored them and went on. He passed a few demolished houses before he saw a Redeemed standing in the doorway of what used to be a popular tavern. The thing did not try to attack him but stood and stared at him in silence. It was The Mighty letting him know that he was aware of his presence.

When he walked through what once had been the public park Langg's Dream Djeen found once again nothing but rubble and dust. Only one piece of vegetation remained: a tall oak tree. From its largest branch hanged the bodies of three young people. Below them on the ground was half of a Together Party banner. The other half had been torn away to make their nooses.

Since the bodies were fresh Djeen hoped it meant that there still were people alive in the city. He saw plenty of Redeemed standing around, looking at him. Or at least he thought they were all Redeemed. In the eyes of some he thought he could see some semblance of human emotions but they were so emaciated, only thin skin on bones, that death was not far away from them either way.

Djeen made his way to the Imperial Palace as he figured it should be where he would find the new ruler of the city. As expected, every representation of the former Emperor had been removed. Only the gigantic golden face which used to tower over the city had not been smashed to pieces. Instead, its features had been carved away and the whole thing painted grey. Now it looked like the smooth, expressionless mask of The Mighty.

The palace doors were closed but slowly opened with a heavy creak as he approached. A cloud of dust rose up from the entrance floor and when it had settled he saw a flicker of light down the main hall. With some hesitation, he followed it.

On the way through, he passed what had once been the throne room. He found it with the doors open and its throne gone. On the floor, like in the hallway, lay the colourful bits of the mosaics that had once decorated the walls. It looked like someone had taken the time to meticulously remove every piece, little square by little square.

He returned to the hallway and continued to follow the light. As he got closer, he realised that it came from an oil lamp being held up by someone. Djeen had just the time to make out the contour of the frail silhouette when the light suddenly died.

The glass ceiling above was covered with dirt so although it was still daytime, the inside of the Palace was sunken in gloom. Strange, repetitive clicking sounds were heard and when Djeen let his hands catch fire to illuminate his way, he saw skeletons all along the walls and up the galleries. Their jaws were moving up and down, like they were laughing.

"Very funny!" Djeen called out. "How about you come out of hiding so we can get this over with?"

"Here!" A voice answered.

Djeen looked behind him, in the direction it had come from. Something large and white leaped at him and pinned him to the floor. Sharp fangs came down on his raised arm and broke on his skin. He pushed the creature off of him, pulled his sword and destroyed it.

Another skeleton wolf ran out of the shadows on his right. Djeen stuck the point of his sword into its open mouth and ended it. A cloud of blue dust blew upwards and when he gazed beyond it he saw among the Redeemed in the gallery the one he had come to meet.

"Even the dogs, eh? You like anything that's alive?"

"You did not learn your lesson the first time," The Mighty said. "Your recklessness always was your worst quality."

"Guess you should have finished me off the last time, then. Anyway, you want to surrender now or will I have to kill you? Ezlen? That's your name, right?"

The Redeemed around The Mighty stopped moving when the name was spoken and he himself did not answer.

"Hijur talked warmly about you," Djeen went on. "Even as he lay dying, his last words were of love for you. See, his daughter has told me all about you, Ezlen. You've undoubtedly heard of..."

"I am aware of the sorcerer Rahin. My righteous wrath will fall upon him like on all those who have taken your side against my divine rule. I will take great pleasure and time in handing out those punishments. But first you will die. What folly made you think you could face me without the sword?"

"I'm the King!" Djeen laughed and threw up his arms. "I am The Fire Demon Who Killed A Thousand Warriors In One Battle! I am the builder of the Shadow Kingdom! They're writing songs about me and they'll still be a thousand summers from now. I don't need the sword, the power is all my own!"

"Well, then... show me what you can!"

The Mighty sent out a bolt of energy at Djeen, sending him flying through to the hall and crashing on the steps of the Palace.

### *

Rahin looked down at her hands. They were unusually large hands for a woman. On them and along the fingers was some hair stubble where she hadn't had the time to shave. She touched her stomach and felt an almost unbearable sorrow at the memory of the dream that had come to her the night before.

The dream itself had been a pleasant one: she had been holding her new-born child in her arms. Sovo had been there, radiant with joy and she herself had felt happier than she could remember ever have been. Then she had woken up and she had heard The Mighty laugh.

He was mocking her, like he had been since the first time she had refused his offer. Two days ago he had come to her again, telling her that he would give her the thing she wanted most if only she told Djeen that a vision had shown her that his struggle was futile and that he needed to surrender. Djeen wouldn't have bought it but Rahin could not betray him this way. Now he had gone to Ily and soon The Mighty would be no more.

A sound of flapping wings snapped her out of her thoughts. The scout landed his daya next to them and his face was a disconcertingly pale shade of white.

"I... I've never seen anything like that," he stammered out. "We're looking at a million, at least."

"Oh Spirit," Liva said. "We're outnumbered ten to one. This is a suicide mission. What are we supposed to do, Rahin?"

"Not turn back. They'll just catch up to us and we can't allow them to take the cities at our backs."

She turned and looked at the soldiers standing behind her. The most skilled warriors were riding Plain Ogre Locusts or dayas. Behind them were the trained mertums with their handlers and furthest back was the largest group, which made up almost half of their army: the foot soldiers.

"Djeen is in Ily facing The Mighty as we speak." She pulled down her protective glasses and pulled up the mask over her mouth. "We only need to keep up the fight until he kills him."

"What if we can't?" Liva asked.

"We will. We have to."

The granite column came falling down on him. Djeen caught it in his arms and pushed it away onto the Palace floor, where it crashed into a thousand pieces. He saw The Mighty standing behind the small army of skeletons rushing towards him. Djeen threw a ball of fire at him and nearly hit him this time.

More skeletons were jumping down the galleries to join in the fight. These new ones were different, they had three arms on each side and carried weapons. This did not make him afraid. He had faced worst. But he needed to get close to The Mighty again and they were wasting his time.

The pink and dark purple colours of the sky were disappearing and giving way to the blackness of night. Liva kept the hope that she would soon see in the dying light another human. But she was surrounded by the walking dead and the mertums. She had been for a while, since Vayl had died by her side. A mertum had ripped their heart right out of their chest and taken a bite, right in front of the eyes of its dying victim. The look of terror on Vayl's face and their last, horrid scream would never leave Liva as long as she lived. Which didn't seemed to be much longer.

She hit a mertum on the forehead with the blade of her battle axe. It did not kill it but a small cloud of blue dust evaporated from the wound. Liva swung around and cut the Redeemed behind her in half. She turned back and hit the mertum again, this time on its chest. Another Redeemed came rushing to her right and she had no time to duck. It slashed her arm with its sword, causing her to drop her axe.

She kneeled to retrieve it but her could no longer feel her dominant arm. Before she could grab her axe with the other one, the mertum kicked it away. She looked up and saw it swing its longsword above its head.

Something lifted her up before the blade could come down on her. Moments later she was seeing below her dangling feet the battlefield where the humans were waging a desperate fight against the creatures of The Mighty. She knew she had to get back there. But first she had to get her arm sewed up before she lost too much blood.

"Where are you going?" Liva asked irritated when she realised the bird was flying the wrong way towards the enemy side.

Looking up, she saw that the daya was not one of their own but a Redeemed from The Mighty's army. She resisted an urge to wriggle herself free, knowing that it would only lead to her falling to the ground and dying. Her best shot was to let the bird take her to wherever it was going.

It flew down close to the ground beyond the enemy lines and dropped her. Liva rolled onto the wet grass before a large Redeemed grabbed her by the hair and pulled her after him. She tried to kick, tried to stand up but she couldn't free herself.

The Redeemed stopped and lifted her up by the neck. Liva clawed at the rotting hand, getting some putrid liquid on her fingers. The thing just stared back at her with its empty eyes and threw her into a wagon.

She landed head first on the metal floor. Another Redeemed grabbed her by the back of her shirt and lifted her up. Other women were here, their hands and feet tied and ripped-off pieces of their clothing stuffed into their mouths. Redeemed stood alongside the walls, pointing their lances at her.

And in the midst of it all she saw in the centre of the wagon a purple glow. Beneath it was a wooden bathtub and she saw it was from the surface of the water that the light was emanating.

"No!" She cried when she understood what the liquid was. "You will not do this to me!"

Before she knew Liva was submerged, the hand of a Redeemed on the back of her neck holding her down. Something was moving in the liquid and touching her. She felt it creep all over and inside her and she understood what it was doing to her.

The Redeemed finally let go of her so she stood up in the tub, coughed and wiped the vile slimy water from her eyes. Memories of the suffering she had witnessed at the Nurseries and of what had happened to her cousin came back. She could almost still hear the screams.

With a calm and determination which surprised even her, Liva stepped out of the bathtub. For a moment she stood and looked at the Redeemed who were pointing their weapons at her. And then, with one last shriek of rage, she ran into their blades.

The Mighty felt satisfaction at the grotesque sight of what Djeen had become. Half his body was covered in burn scars. Hair no longer grew on the places the skin had been damaged, which with his natural pilosity gave him the appearance of an partially skinned animal. His left eyelid hanged low over the blue eye which had inexplicably remained undamaged.

If only he had burned Djeen's remains after their last encounter, the abomination that he was would have not come back to life. But on the other hand, it gave The Mighty more opportunities to toy with his victim before his inevitable and final defeat.

"How about you send more of these six-armed skeleton things? Those were fun," Djeen said mockingly as he leaned against a fallen column.

He put his fingers to his nose and looked down at his hands. Blood. The Mighty had weakened him enough that he was beginning to bleed like a normal man again.

"I could," The Mighty said, "but I think the time has come for you to face the punishment you deserve for your disobedience against my Perfect Order. Your friends have met their ends in the battle you were too slow to stop and now is your turn."

He shot a ball of energy at Djeen, knocking the useless sword out of his hand. It slid across the floor and Djeen turned to retrieve it but was hit in the back by another blow of energy. He fell head first on a sharp piece of debris. Blood covered the unscarred half of his face when he after much effort managed to roll unto his back.

Laughter from The Mighty echoed throughout the dilapidated palace as he approached his victim, repeatedly shocking him with lightning to further weaken him. When he stood above him he saw that the man was sobbing, tears making patterns like rivers through the blood on his face.

"Oh, how your pride led you astray," the demon said amused. "Do you have anything to say for yourself before I lay my judgement upon you?"

"Please," Djeen begged. "Please don't hurt m..."

Before The Mighty had realised, Djeen had reached below his robe and grabbed the sword. Now he stood up triumphant, brandishing the weapon above his head.

"No! No!" The Mighty cried out and ran backwards away from him.

"Oh, yes! I knew you'd have it on you. Like you'd ever keep away from your reach the one thing that can destroy you. You're way too much of a control freak for that."

"Foolish little man! You cannot defeat my Perfect Order from becoming. You cannot defeat me!"

"Yeah? So why you keep backing away from me? Oh, and by the way..." Djeen reached inside his shirt and revealed a half-emptied vial of blood hanging on a string around his neck. "That's not my real blood. You didn't even put the littlest cut on me."

The demon flew up and burst through the glass ceiling of the palace. A thousand little shards rained down on Djeen. A couple of pieces fell on his eyes and ricocheted of their surface like they were made of stone.

He jumped after The Mighty, ran after him a few steps on the roof before a Redeemed daya swooped down suddenly and The Mighty escaped on its back. Djeen continued his pursuit, hoped through the streets, from roof to roof and finally over the border wall of the city. He followed his target until they were a safe enough distance from Ily and then threw a stream of flames from his sword. The daya burned up as did The Mighty's robe as he fell off.

Djeen closed his eyes, took one deep breath and followed his first attack with letting his fire shoot from all sides of his body. When his opponent at last hit the ground, the surroundings as far as the eye could see were covered in ashes. Not even a single blade of grass remained.

His robe gone, his mask fallen off, nothing longer hid the true shape of The Mighty.

"What even are you?" Djeen asked dumfounded when he saw the skeleton held together by shining and pulsating blue strings of energy. "Is there anything left of the poor Ezlen?"

The fiend did not answer. He stood silent, perhaps thinking that the sight of his nakedness was answer enough.

"It doesn't matter," Djeen concluded and breathed in the vile but to him always so comforting smell of sulphur. "You reign of terror ends today."

He gazed up at the moon and the sky, which glowed with a special silver tone this night, and hoping Spirit could and would listen whispered a final prayer for it to watch over his friends. Then he set himself and his sword ablaze and charged his enemy.

Rahin shot her last arrow at a mertum running towards her. It hit the creature in the head but did not kill it. She tossed her bow aside and pulled her fighting knives from her sleeves. With them she slashed through the Redeemed attempting to climb on top of the locust she was riding.

The giant insect was doing what it could to defend itself, trampling the undead with its long legs with weaponised spines. Rahin saw how it bit off the face of a mertum and spit it out while the blue ghoul cried in agony and confusion. But the locust's struggle was in vain. More Redeemed kept coming and a heavy double-headed axe through the leg sent the poor beast toppling to the side.

Rahin rolled as she fell onto the ground. Mud and the blood of fallen soldiers sipped through the fabric of her clothes and through her hair. Instinctively, she slashed at all sides with her knives but the stars in her eyes she had from falling and the full-mooned but still too dark night made so that she couldn't clearly see those who were assailing her.

She could feel Redeemed disintegrating beneath her blades but she also felt the claws of a mertum cutting her thigh and sharp teeth sinking into her shoulder muscles. Arms pulled her back down when she tried to stand and three gigantic mertums towering over her blocked the light from the moon. She closed her eyes and accepted her fate.

In her mind, she saw Djeen. His stern but compassionate gaze which spoke of his intensely tormented soul. A deep sadness came over her but at the same time a certain sense of peace. She would die but he would still defeat The Mighty and save the world. All had been foretold and would come to pass, with or without her alive.

Realising that she could no longer feel the claws and teeth ripping her flesh, she opened her eyes and saw to her amazement that the Redeemed had all fallen lifeless on the battleground. As for the mertums, they were lying or sitting around sick with a sudden and violent illness.

On shaking, bleeding legs Rahin stood up and took in the surreal scene. She whistled a specific set of tunes and was answered with another one. It was Sovo. He had survived.

"What is happening?" Rahin heard people confounded around her.

"And what's that over there?"

She looked in the direction people were pointing. A red line on the horizon went from the ground all the way up to the sky, were it cast a burning glow over dark clouds. It was too far away to see exactly what it was but Rahin knew it was a pillar of fire.

### *

It was dawn by the time Sovo and Rahin arrived at the point where all the vegetation had burned away. The fire pillar was still far into the distance but the heat was already unbearable, far worse than anything Sovo had ever experienced even in the most scorching parts of the Toyanese desert. This did not seem to deter Rahin.

"You should go back now," she told him, "I'll go the last bit on my own."

"What? Are you crazy? You can't go over there, you'll die."

"I'm not crazy," she retorted calmly but clearly offended. "I know what I'm doing, I'll be okay."

"But why do you need to go? It looks like he's got this covered."

"He doesn't. He's struggling, I can feel it, and he can't finish this on his own."

She gave Sovo a quick kiss on the lips, hesitated and followed up with a long hug.

"I really need to go now," she said when she let go of him. "Please don't worry about me, I'll be alright. There's just one thing I'm going to need you to do while I'm away."

### *

It was long after midday but not yet early evening when Sovo got back to the battlefield. The soldiers were still in the process of burning the myriads of bodies to prevent the spreading of disease as well as killing off all the mertums, who had become severely weak and sick now that The Mighty's spirit no longer kept them up.

Among those doing this dirty work were Silvi's enchanted men, which was how he knew she wasn't far away. He found out by asking around that she and Teok had gone off together into a wooden area. The former emperor was apparently not interested in helping out in any manual labour, as per usual.

In a patch of bushes by an old oak tree is where he found the two lovers. Silvi was on top of Teok, riding him backwards when she and Sovo simultaneously saw each other. Embarrassed, she covered her breasts and nether parts with her hands and blushed as she dismounted her man to go get her clothes.

Teok was unlike her not ashamed but annoyed that his moment of pleasure had been interrupted.

"What the fuck?" He grunted. "How about giving people some privacy?"

"I'm sorry but we need Silvi and her powers immediately. It's an emergency."

"What's happening?" The girl wondered as she put back on her dress, which was a beautiful emerald green and made Sovo a bit sad at the thought of it ruined.

"Redeemed," Sovo said and walked up behind her. "Forty thousands of them coming from the east."

"But I thought..."

Sovo's knife had penetrated the back of her neck before she could finish her sentence. Her body fell lifeless to the ground and Teok let out an awful scream.

"What did you do?" He shouted, leaping up still completely naked. "Why?! She was going to get me my Empire back!"

Sovo stood and fought the urge to kill him as well. Rahin had given strict orders based on visions she had had that he must not be harmed.

"Go away, Teok. Return to your parents' land and live a simple life. Abandon your dreams of glory and do not try to regain power. If you do, we will find out about it and we will kill you."

Sovo turned away from the man's curses and hateful glare and lifted Silvi's body in his arms. Skinny as she had been, it felt like it weight nothing. Parts of the back of her dress had now an irregular dark brown pattern where her blood had been soaked up by the fabric. Sovo did not look at her face by fear that her youth would give him more guilt than he was prepared to handle.

Once out of the forest he found soldiers whom he ordered to take back the girl's body to her home village and family. He went on and found that the men previously enchanted by Silvi's curse were now free from it but seemed disoriented and confused.

"How are you feeling?" He asked one, an Ilyian man about his own age.

"Like I've awaken from a wonderful dream," he said and looked with disgust at the corpse covered field, "and found the world as wretched as it always was."

### *

When Rahin had said she was going to help Djeen finish the war, Sovo had assumed it would not take long. But after a day had passed and then two and three, he had started to despair.

From as close as he could get without risking passing out from the heat, he could see through the spying glass how she sat cross-legged, her eyes closed and her whole being in deep concentration while Djeen and The Mighty went on burning. Sovo could see their shadows in the flames. They were not moving but always standing in the same position: the man striking down his blade against his enemy who received the blow on his raised skeletal arm. How both had not gone to ashes, he did not understand. Neither could he explain how Rahin had not succumbed to the heat.

Still more days passed and she did not move from her place about ten steps from the pillar. She had not brought anything to eat or drink and it didn't seem like she needed to.

Sovo went back to the camp and searched through her things for the item he hoped would give him a clue of what was happening: her father's notebook. On the first page he found one answer he was looking for. The final battle between Djeen and The Mighty would last twenty days and twenty-one nights.

What the text did not reveal was if Rahin would come out of it alive. Did she herself know if it was the case? Had there been something in the way she had looked at him when they had parted which could have given him a clue? Sovo replayed the scene in his head over and over again but couldn't get any wiser.

So he waited the rest of the twenty days and at the end of the twenty-first night, as the first rays of sunlight made themselves known above the horizon, Rahin finally opened her eyes. She stood up slowly and then suddenly ran off as fast as she could. After a distance of about five-hundred steps, the pillar behind her began to expand rapidly and although she quickened her pace, it soon was right at her back.

Sovo let out a scream and fell to his knees but through the spying glass he was holding in a cramp-like grip he saw that some invisible force pushed her forward and away from the fire. The pillar became smaller again and in the time of a breath it had become a sliver, then a solitary flame in the middle of the sky until finally it twisted on itself and disappeared into nothingness.

Sovo ran to her and was shocked by the brutally cold air that met him. It was as if the fire had sucked every trace of heat and taken it with it.

"My love, are you okay?" He asked and took Rahin into his arms.

She nodded an affirmative but her feet weakened beneath her and Sovo had to hold her tighter against him.

Rahin looked back at the spot where the pillar had just recently burned. Tears welled up in her eyes when she spoke.

"It is done."

### *

Rahin marvelled at how much Ily had changed since she had last seen it on her way to help Djeen. The then mostly empty streets were full of life again and in the place of the many ruins new buildings had been erected. People had quickly come together and helped each other create systems of mutual aid to get themselves out of their miserable situation. There were no leaders that she could see but many organisers and mentors.

How long would this last? Likely not for long. Eventually one or more would rise with powerlust in their hearts and it would not take long for the people to once more be divided and subjugated. But for now, for a short moment in time, things were as well as they could be.

The laughter of children caught Rahin's attention. She looked down near the foot of the stairs leading up the wall but realised that the sound was coming from the other side, from out of the city. A little Toyanese boy of about six winters was staring up at her and smiling. Further away was another Toyanese boy running in a wide circle, chasing something only he could see.

"Come, Ezlen! Come play", he said to the first.

"Coming, Hijur!"

The little boy by the wall ran back to his friend and although there was only grassland around, a blast of sand came and took the boys before fading away.

"Something happening down there?"

It was Sovo coming back from a newly-opened food market a few streets away.

"No, nothing. Just admiring the view", she said and took the still smoking hot meatbread Sovo was handing to her.

They stood a while and enjoyed the sweet and savoury taste of their meal as they gazed southwards over the vast green plain.

"So," Sovo said when they were done, "what do we do now?"

"Well", Rahin answered and put her arms around his waist, "let's go home and enjoy the peace for as long as it lasts. Spirit knows some gave everything for it."

## A King Shall Come: The First Vision of Four

Written down by the sorcerer Hijur, father of the sorceress Rahin, after it came to him on the sand mountain of Agrfana.

I saw a land of eternal snow, where the cold never left. But the people therein were strong and proud and in their hearts burned the unextinguishable fire of Spirit.

One day came over the mountain a man. Or rather they saw him as a man but he was in truth a skeleton, fleshless and as white as ivory. He showed them the mighty powers he had and convinced a not-insignificant number of them that he was a god. Many followed him and he began a journey through the land to gather more disciples in this new faith he proposed.

From most villages and towns, he was chased away. The majority of people saw what a destructive path his teachings would lead to if they were obeyed. There was great enmity towards the words he spoke, but that he called persecution and got much sympathy for it. Even with all the objection he encountered, his new religion steadily grew until one third of all people in the land of snow were his.

That was all he needed, along with his powers, to subjugate the whole land and establish a kingdom for himself. He declared himself Mighty God and Creator and demanded the worship of all, less they be slaughtered.

His rule was merciless and the burden of laws put on the people was great. Many perished by his hand, by the famines he created and his thirst for blood. The people became sick in their spirits, losing all hope and all the strength that had once been in their hearts.

Spirit sensed an imbalance in itself and in the world. To remedy this, it bore itself a son. Born through a human woman, he was given a power like no one had possessed before and like no one would possess after him.

But the king found the boy and, sensing in him magic like he had never known before, kept him as prisoner in hope that he one day could use his powers for his own advantage. The child grew to be a young man in the presence of the king and in his heart grew a burning hatred which only made him more powerful. One day, he escaped from the dark prison the king had kept him in and he travelled far, over the mountain and into a to him unknown land.

There he became first a wanderer, then a warrior. His path crossed with the one who shall be called "The Guide" and "The Bow" and without who he would fumble in the darkness, unable to find his aim.

A great tragedy fell upon him in those days and an ardent fury was released from him and upon a thousand fighters. The Guide lost him and for three winters did not see him again.

When she found him once more, they travelled to find the sword through which his powers could be multiplied. This weapon, forged by Spirit itself between this realm and the next, was the only one powerful enough to destroy the evil king of the land of snow.

The sword found, a great struggle and a mighty battle fell upon him. But with the Guide and the weapon, he conquered them both. From that day on, he was called King by many and became leader to many tribes.

And he became a King like the world had not seen before, one who seeks not to rule but to teach the people to rule themselves. He lead them through a great war and brought them prosperity in the midst of adversity, comfort in the midst of despair.

One day the demon king from the land of snow came over the mountain with an army of the dead, for not a living thing had by that time survived his rule. The King's people trembled but there was unity among all the tribes and together they fought this terrible army.

With the Sword of Spirit, the King came to the final battle against the one who called himself The Mighty. Twenty days and twenty-one nights the struggle lasted and the Guide came to be by the King's side, for without her spirit he could not defeat the demon at all.

But so powerful was The Mighty that to defeat him the King had to destroy himself, to sacrifice to the burning fire of Spirit even his very soul so that nothing would be left for Spirit to reclaim.

And so, the King vanquished the demon and saved his people and the world. A grand era of peace ensued and for many thousand winters no one forgot the name of the King.

###

