Ward

[Zadown]

Before him stood a heavy, reinforced door of stone and iron. It was set in a sheer cliff of basalt and on it had been written a far more impressive array of protective enchantments than the front gates of the city had had. The empty space around the door was littered with the dark green remains of the glass storm – everywhere else the shards had been tidied away. On the massive door was a small hatch and a large knocker. The guards and the seneschal retreated silently away as he studied the door from a distance, but he paid no attention to them any more. His mind expanded, sending its tentacles towards the door to go through it, but he was swiftly rebutted by the even more impressive second layer of warding written under the first, a piece of art made by a planewalker or some other powerful being: runes of misdirection, obfuscation and amnesia. The Dreamer blinked in confusion, his eyes cycling through all the colours of the rainbow, and regained his clarity of mind only with great concentration. He took a step forward to steady himself and realized he had physically reeled from the force of the backlash, heard the hushed muttering of the mortals far behind him.

 

Uhh… that could be Arenogh’s work, if what I have heard about him is not overly exaggerated. That’d mean it is warded against Astral travel as well.

 

He walked forward, the green glass shards tinkling under his boots of dragon-leather. At the door he shrugged, then swung the knocker producing a loud, deep booming noise. Without a noticeable pause, the hatch in the door was opened and a cowled figure stared through it. He spoke quickly, impatiently, sounding as if he had been interrupted doing something important, his voice dry and raspy.

 

“Yes? You are too old to become a novice and too young to be looking for your final doom, even with all those scars, stranger. Get lost.”

 

He tried to close the hatch, but only managed to slam it against the Dreamer’s fist. The planewalker had moved with unnatural speed and as the he knocked the hatch open again his eyes blazed.

 

“This th’ Brotherhood o’ Armageddon, monk?”

 

“Yes, every fool knows that. And they know not to anger us, too. None shall pass this door unless I let them through, stranger.”

 

The monk stared back with emerald green eyes from the depths of his cowl, withstanding the planewalker’s burning gaze without flinching. After a moment he spoke again, slower and with more patience.

 

“Well, well … guess you might have something to talk with us about, after all. It has been a while since any of your kind was seen here, planewalker.”

 

“There aren’t many of us, old man. An’ th’ few seldomly find themselves in such places as this, so devoid of greater powers.”

 

The monk unbarred the door, a process that took a long while, and swung it open. It moved smoothly and without making a sound, and the Dreamer walked through the widening gap into the darkness inside. He adjusted his vision and saw how the corridor had been designed to be easily defensible against both mundane and magical attacks. From this side he could see the whole glory of the wards written in the door and the basalt around it, the traps hinted at in the overall design. The monk swung the massive door shut without much effort, put the two bars in place and turned to face the planewalker. He motioned the Dreamer to follow and walked deeper into the stronghold of the Brotherhood of Armageddon, the planewalker in tow. They moved through wide and narrow tunnels, large and vast rooms, moisture dropping from the dark, porous walls, their steps echoing through the misty, empty spaces. A few times they saw a small group of monks somewhere further away, appearing from the mist and disappearing into it like phantoms. In same abrupt manner they heard noises, appearing and fading: the clamor of heavy bells, voices raised in chant, sounds of metalworking. Eventually they reached a small stone door which the monk opened with a key, and they entered a tiny chamber, just large enough for a bed, a cupboard and a small table with two chairs. They both sat down and the monk, his face still hidden in the depths of his cowl, broke the ensuing silence first with his dry voice.

 

“So, the Grail has brought you here?”

 

“Ya, ‘t has. Ye have it here, neh?”

 

“Yes. Yes, we have, and we will keep it here. You will not have it.”

 

The planewalker shrugged, his eyes so dark green they were almost black.

 

“Th’ lore says it travels to where th’ need is greatest, to defend against th’ attacks of th’ Law. Ye are under siege, then?”

 

“Law? Perhaps they are forces of Law, or of Order. But yes, the mindless machines out there in the desert are closing in. The Steam Army the locals call them, and while the Grail has not allowed us to re-conquer the areas they have overrun it is our best defence against them. It powers our meagre magics and fights against the corruption of the Order – against the paralysing sense of futility they project.”

 

The Dreamer nodded thoughtfully.

 

If I attack them to get the Grail, it will defend itself against me. Not to mention if they are keeping it in a vault warded by Arenogh I might not even be able to reach it without their help.

 

“Perhaps I can do somethin’ about th’ Army. Without it, ye will not need th’ Grail, neh?”

 

“Ha! You haven’t even seen the Army, planewalker. I know the lore and I know how powerful your kind are, but you are not gods.”

 

A dangerous grin appeared on the Dreamer’s face and his eyes turned grey.

 

“Ya, ‘s true th’ gods are not us – but that hardly makes us less powerful. They call me th’ Godslayer, an’ not entirely without reason.”

 

The monk raised his gloved hands wordlessly and removed his cowl. Underneath it his face was desiccated and dead, the emerald green eyes the only living things in that dry mask.

 

“This is what they did to me, the previous planewalkers, as they asked me to wait for the next one all those centuries ago. See now why I do not fear you, Godslayer?”

[Zadown]

Fourteen

 

The Dreamer barely had time to land on the stone pier of his Astral harbour before grinning Jankiize rushed towards him, stopping right before hitting his wards. She did not seem like a child anymore, despite her short stature compared to the tall planewalker. She was 5’3” now, her long, yellow pony-tail almost reaching her hips. On her face was a look that would have told a keen observer she had seen more than normal children, but she had weathered those storms. She was wearing casual version of the cream-and-black -colored spirit-raiser robes, still quite elaborate but simple enough to actually move in, and from her belt hang the dark scabbard of her sword, Winter’s Touch. On the middle finger of her right hand was a single metal ring, the signet ring of the House Vangaijuua – from her left ear hang a small and elegant wooden earring, from her right a metal one. She had no other ornaments and needed none to be beautiful, only thing marring her appearance being a straight, narrow scar on her right cheek.

 

“Hey, uncle! Where have you been this time? And where’s the maid of honor you promised me?”

 

He did not answer right away, but grinned right back at her. His scars moved around his face but even their intimidating effect was undone by the sheer warmth glowing in his golden-white eyes. The Dreamer let his wards fade away and danced forward with moves originally meant for battle, grabbed the startled Jankiize by her armpits and raised her high.

 

“Why, Li’tl Princess, I’ve been scouting out th’ exact location of th’ Grail, of course!”

 

“I told you not to call me … what!? You found the Grail, uncle?”

 

He grinned again and winked, a very uncharacteristic gesture for him, and lowered the girl down slowly.

 

“I might’ve, Li’tl Princess. I might’ve indeed. Or should I call ye th’ Grail Carrier, neh?”

 

“So you can bring my parents back, now?”

 

Those hopeful words removed some of the joy from the air and shadowed the Dreamer’s smile. He made an empty gesture.

 

“Naw, ye know th’ pact as well as I do, Jankiize. After th’ task is done, then I will bring them back.”

 

She frowned and lowered her eyes, playing absent-mindedly with the hilt of her katana.

 

“Ah … and how long will that be, uncle? I’d prefer my parents not to be the same age as I am, when they finally return.”

 

“A few years, I’d imagine. Or until th’ Grail escapes us – this one hunt’ll is all I ask of ye, as per by the pact. Ye can’t see th’ balance fallin’ over, but I do, an’ this is th’ best chance to right it either I or th’ cards can see.”

 

“Balance, bah. But I guess that is the best I can expect from you, uncle.”

 

She looked up again, hostility and affection mixed in an impossible way in her eyes. The hate began to clear from them like a lifting mist and she sighed. He continued speaking with a neutral tone.

 

“Ya, I’m afraid so, Jankiize. Th’ pact’s as good a bargain ye’ll ever get from me, ya. But we do not have th’ Grail yet. We’ll have to leave soon to ensure we’ll get it at all. It is hard to track, but th’ fact I tracked it makes it clear it is not impossible to track, an’ I’d rather be there before any other planewalkers that’d at best make it vanish again, at worst gain it for their own uses.”

 

“We, uncle? You are taking me with you?”

 

“I can hardly brin’ th’ Grail here for ye to carry around, ya know? Th’ whole point of th’ pact’s the fact I can’t do that.”

 

He gave a short, dry laugh and started to walk past the girl but turned back towards her after a few steps.

 

“Oh ya, Janki, we still have a short time before we go, say a month or so. I need to finish yer armor. Choose some things ye want with ya but nothin’ too heavy, ‘s easier for me to fetch ye things once we are there than tow ‘em all th’ way through half th’ known Void.”

 

He resumed his walk, quickly absorbed in his thoughts, leaving a muttering Jankiize behind.

 

“A short time … say a month or so. That’s an eternity!”

 

* * *

 

“How’d ya like it? Not too heavy for ya, puny mortal?”

 

“It is just fine, uncle. I’m not meant to use it all the time, am I?”

 

Jankiize turned around, clad in a full suit of adamantium scales, trying to familiarize herself with the luxurious weight. The armor had no helmet, but it had added runes around the neck that extended its protection to the wearers bare head. None of the magical protection it granted showed directly to the mortal eye, but the bronze-colored scales glinted faintly in an eerie manner. The accompanying black gloves and boots were made of dragon hide and were unadorned.

 

“Ya, actually ye are meant to use it all th’ time, m’lady. ‘S th’ uniform of th’ Grail Carrier, an’ ‘s not all just for show, youn’ lady.”

 

“Um, for that it is a bit uncomfortable. I was hoping I could’ve used my spirit-raiser robes.”

 

Her words had a pleading tone to them and she gave the Dreamer her best cute look. He shook his head sternly, not moved by the display.

 

“We can’t give ‘em any clues where ye are from, just in case. Not to mention I want ye to have all th’ protection ye can have, Grail Carrier. Ye’ve already been in mortal danger almost half a dozen times in yer short life. Next time ye are shot at or used as a target for old enchanted spears, I’d rather see ye wearin’ this. It won’t deflect th’ blow from any planewalker’s blade but ‘s better than nothin’.”

 

“Aw, can’t you just protect me? It is a bit much to expect me to wear this all the time.”

 

“I can’t be next to ye all th’ time, m’lady. I will have to keep fightin’ in th’ Eternal War for there to be somethin’ to be saved by all this.”

 

Jankiize pouted for a moment, but soon forgot to stay annoyed when she tried several different practice moves, fighting invisible enemies with an imaginary sword. Something of the Dreamer’s ease of drifting deeper into one’s own thoughts had transferred to her, perhaps due to the fact she had been relatively alone as she grew up, her own ideas her only constant companions. He watched her go through the forms he had taught her, the small faults of her style seeming huge to him, who had practiced and honed those same forms for hundreds of years.

 

Still, she should fare fine against any mortal. What she lacks in strength and experience she makes up in the equipment she uses. Useless in this game of so few mortal players and so many immortal one…

 

He shivered as he felt an unescapable doom over them both, felt as if nothing he’d do would be enough to protect something as fragile as this mortal, or any mortal, through the chaos ahead. Not wanting to voice his feeling, he moved silently forward and carefully adjusted the poise of the girl. She gave him a questioning look and then concentrated on committing the adjustment to her memory.

Edited August 24, 2004 by Zadown

[Zadown]

The stone door swung open with a moaning creak. The Dreamer stepped in, followed closely by Jankiize and Hroeder, the landlord of the tower they were examining. The room they had entered was not very big and contained a lot of dust and a spiralling stairway both up- and downwards. The planewalker stood at the doorstep and looked around, an inscrutable look on his scarred face, his eyes dark green. Time passed and Hroeder started to fidget nervously, not used to the immortal planewalker’s different sense of time. Jankiize, familiar with the ways her guardian’s mind worked, waited stoically. Hroeder could not wait silently for so long and spoke anxiously.

 

“Does it not please you, o Lord? It is what you said you were looking for, an isolated, easily defensible structure.”

 

The Dreamer frowned and retracted the tentacles of his mind, irritated by the small talk of the landlord.

 

“Hmm? Oh ya, ‘tis quite close to what I was searchin’. How much an’ in what currency do ye want for th’ whole tower, mortal?”

 

“Err… seven bars of gold or three ingots and five bars of silver, o Lord. Very cheap for such a sturdy tower!”

 

The landlord gulped as the planewalker fixed his stare on him. His greed withstood the test, however, and he did not shout out a lower price to break the ensuing silence. He did not notice the Dreamer’s hands disappearing either, a mantra of afterthisnevermeddleintheaffairsofthelords going through his head. Hroeder did notice, however, when the planewalker’s hands finished their jaunt through the Void and returned with gold – the unmistakeable ‘clink’ of pure gold registered even through his fear loud and clear. The Dreamer silently handed him seven cold, gently steaming bars of gold, all different, all marked with letters and runes and numbers he was unfamiliar with and most importantly, all heavier than the usual bar of gold used here.

 

“Does that conclude th’ pact in a satisfactory manner, Hroeder of Arkstâd?”

 

Hroeder glanced up from his armful of gold, barely managing to hold all the differently shaped bars in his arms and nodded vigorously.

 

“Oh yes, thank you most kindly, o Lord. I will send a servant later with the necessary papers.”

 

The Dreamer’s return nod was perfunctory and it was followed by a gesture of dismissal Hroeder obeyed with relief and alacrity. Jankiize glanced after him with a bored air, then turned towards the planewalker who was now standing in the middle of the room, engrossed in the visions of his second sight.

 

“Uncle?”

 

“Ya, m’lady?”

 

“You know he asked too much, and you gave him more than he asked?”

 

“Why’d I care, hmm? Generosity ‘s a trait I get to exercise rarely, an’ I do not waste my time lookin’ for a recipient who follows some nebulous virtues so he’d deserve th’ gold I fish from th’ depths of th’ Void.”

 

He turned away from the currents of mana and gave her a knowing look.

 

“Ya see, to ask too much from th’ likes of me ‘s either stupidity or courage. As long as it stays in th’ realms of courage I don’t mind – if he’d asked, say, twenty bars of gold it’d been different.”

 

The anger always close to the surface flashed in his eyes, not directed towards the girl, and he smiled. She grinned back.

 

“So, how much gold can I ask, uncle?”

 

“I’d suggest platinium, m’lady Jankiize – all the gold ye could ask would weight too much for yer puny frame.”

 

* * *

 

In front of them opened the vast plains of volcanic wasteland. The desert was covered with peculiar camps out of which great pillars of smoke and steam arose. The Dreamer could, by enhancing his eyesight, barely see the nearest golems and steam-powered warmachines that made the most of the camped army. They seemed tiny from this distance, but he had faced them too many times to believe in that illusion. He turned towards his companion, one of the monks from the Brotherhood of Armageddon, here out of the town showing his dry, dead face openly. The monk was leaning on a stout, tall staff that was adorned with both semi-precious stones and runes. Under the pair’s feet the teleportation circle they had used was still fading gently from this world, its sigils glowing fainter every passing moment.

 

“This all of them, Sreacjim? Or do they have forces beyond th’ horizonts, or perhaps allies in th’ Void?”

 

Sreacjim cackled, gave the Dreamer a lipless grin.

 

“You want more, Lord of Chaos? These tiny armies do not sate your ceaseless appetite for destruction? Hah, well, they do limit our scouting a bit – after this the taint of Order grows too strong, and the radiant force of the Grail weakens as we travel further from it. These might be the vanguard, who knows, and there could be endless rows upon rows of them waiting in the shadows of the old ruins of the Achallem Empire, yes, and in the Void. Or this could be all.”

 

The planewalker nodded and concentrated, sending out the tentacles of his mind, stretching them thin and far this time. They swam through the bitter clouds of Law’s taint, spread over the huge army and spiralled down to briefly examine the camps. His eyes turned tepid grey and his features slack as he poured more and more of his focus into the difficult task, the undead monk waiting with the patience of the dead. The Dreamer noted briefly the squads of crystal golems, the few efficient-looking human and gnome engineers moving around the camps absorbed in their own work, the various warmachines with obscure mechanical crews talking with each other by a language of light pulses and shrill cries. Here and there he spied people who looked like officers, but even they were all mortals, most of them human. They were not locals, that much he could sense even through the faint link he had with the outer fringes of his perception, but he could not place them any more accurately than that. He reached further, deeper into the deadly cloud of monochrome clarity of Law and felt something stir, touched some other greater power briefly before withdrawing quietly and with stealth. When the Dreamer came to, the first thing he saw were the bright aquamarine eyes of the dead monk. He blinked and stretched his body, orienting himself back to the physical reality.

 

“Quite th’ army they have, whoever they are.”

 

“What did you see, Lord of Chaos? Do the numbers please you? Enough blood, oil and crystal shards for your hungry sword?”

 

The planewalker scowled briefly, then shrugged and accepted the truth that even his great powers could do little to chastise an animated corpse, ignored the insolent tone of the monk’s voice.

 

“There is somethin’ behind the army, some mastermind of th’ Law. He does not declare himself openly – th’ flags were all standard an’ I could see no angels to divine their lord’s name from. I could wreak havoc in th’ camps an’ perhaps make him appear, but that’d make them know I am here. Whoever’s behind all this would more likely get some help than confront me personally – th’ gladiators o’ th’ Void do not create armies to hide behind.”

 

“So, mighty Lord, you will do nothing to help us, then?”

 

“’Twas not what I said, carcass. There’s just some need for subterfu’e an’ tactics. I am as eager to get rid o’ this army as ye are. The flows of magic are already weak here, this plane cannot sustain th’ strain o’ th’ taint of Law for long before magic will be dead.”

 

They turned to look towards the smoke-veiled camps again, the planewalker and the dead monk, two thin figures standing between the town and the crushing fist of the Steam Army.

[Zadown]

The marketplace was chaotic and loud with people shouting offers, wyverns letting out shrill cries as potential buyers poked and prodded them and black gulls jabbering with each other. Jankiize was both tense and exhilarated about the new, exciting world of mortals she’d seen so little of before this. She was wearing her new armor with a cream and black –colored tabard, beads of sweat forming on her face from the heat of the nearby lava ocean and from the effort of carrying the weight of her scalemail. She turned towards her companion, a local girl called Nemue the Dreamer had hired as her servant and guide, and spent a moment just watching her as she animatedly haggled down the price of an earring Jankiize wanted. She was heavily tanned, almost brown with black hair, a young woman few years older than she. Nemue was wearing no jewelry and had no weapon, just a soft leather jerkin over cotton shirt and trousers that seemed far more sensible in this heat than her own clumsy armor. Worn leather sandals and a simple belt finished the outfit. Just then she turned towards her, triumphant, and motioned her closer so she wouldn’t need to shout over the clamor.

 

“Half a bar of silver he says, that’s as low as I could get the price.”

 

Jankiize started to fumble with her purse as she replied, naively revealing most of its contents on her palm. She did not notice the warning look Nemue gave her, absorbed in the process of searching through her money for a proper coin.

 

“How much that was again in platinum? About a nugget?”

 

As she raised her eyes she finally saw Nemue’s frantic gestures and gave her an incomprehending look but put the purse away, after choosing enough coins to pay the earring with. She paid, realizing that she’d overdone the payment by the gleeful tone of the merchant’s voice and turned towards her companion, who whispered exasperatedly.

 

“That was stupid, girl. Now you’ll have all the pickpockets of the city after you!”

 

Jankiize blushed, embarrassed and angry at herself at the same time.

 

“Oh. Sorry, didn’t realize.”

 

Nemue sighed and grabbed her arm, leading her away while still whispering loudly.

 

“Too late now. We can hope they will not try anything stupid, you being with Lord of Chaos, but … money’s money. And it’d be loss of face for them to leave your purse to you, now.”

 

“But … it’s not like I’m the only rich person around. None of those jewelry seemed too cheap and they were doing a brisk trade…”

 

Jankiize’s voice faded as the annoyed look stayed glued to Nemue’s face.

 

“That’s not the point! They do not flaunt their money, nobody does, here. You are allowed rich clothes and jewelry, but showing precious metals out there on the street is just stupid. Where have you lived, in a barrel?”

 

The armoured girl’s eyes narrowed and she glared at Nemue. Jankiize seemed to grow as she assumed an icy, imperial posture.

 

“In a barrel, yes. I think I’ve had enough of your company for today, guide. You are dismissed.”

 

“What!? Don’t be silly, girl. You don’t want to walk these streets alone.”

 

Jankiize turned around to hide her face and marched defiantly away. Nemue almost started to follow her, then her shoulders slumped in defeat and she turned around, heading towards her own home. As soon as Jankiize had rounded a corner, her shoulders slumped as well and she walked dejectedly towards their tower. In the bustling crowd she did not pay attention to a small, ragged boy bumping into her, but continued her walk, gloomy thoughts circling around her head.

 

She opened the stone door, now warded with deeply-etched runes, and stepped in to their antechamber. This one room was pretty much the same it had been when they had bought this tower: small, still slightly dusty, big part of the room taken by the stairway. An angelic guard sat on a small stool, disguised both by illusion and a plate armor to look like a local warrior. He nodded solemnly to her and turned back to play dice with his demonic counterpart, also masked and armoured, who winked lecherously to the girl and then winced as his binding punished him for his small transgression. Jankiize ignored them and took the stairs up. As she walked upwards, the tower changed, stretching to every direction. The room directly above the ground level was the size of a large hall, littered with various maps, dim portals and idle angels and demons. She saw the Dreamer sitting at his large table, the space in front of him stacked full of books, parchments and letters. Jankiize paused there, remembering something, and after a brief search realized what she had been afraid of: her purse was missing. Glowering she approached the planewalker, who raised his eyes from the parchments he was reading.

 

“Ya, Janki? Ye seem angry ‘bout somethin’.”

 

“Somebody stole my purse! Could you catch the thief, uncle?”

 

The Dreamer put down what he was reading and regarded Jankiize gravely, waiting patiently for the worst indignation fade from his ward’s face. When she seemed calmer, he spoke slowly, articulating each word with care.

 

“Yes, yes I could catch the thief, m’lady. Do you fully understand what would happen then, Jankiize Towikae Vangaijuua?”

 

Her voice was subdued as she replied.

 

“Yes, I think I do.”

 

“And would want me to exact that fate on whoever the thief was, for the sake of some meaningless pieces of metal, Grail Carrier?”

 

The girl doodled some half-formed, meaningless runes on the floor with the tip of her boot, kept her gaze lowered.

 

“No, I guess not, uncle.”

 

His face broke into sudden smile, wan but warm, and continued with his normal odd accent.

 

“Good. Next time, ask me to ward yer purse or do it yerself, hmm?”

 

“Yes, uncle.”

[Zadown]

Tiny illusionary armies crept across a map on the table, paused and flickered back to their starting positions. Frowning, the Dreamer crouched over the map and tried to divine a working strategy against the impossible numbers of the Steam Army: the golems and the war machines loomed over the tiny dot marking Arkstâd, a thin line of transparent monks and local guard standing between the two. Jankiize, who was sitting in empty air slightly above the table right next to it, buoyed by her own spell, pretended to be reading a huge tome but in reality kept her eyes on the endless wars waged just below her. The planewalker sighed and with a small gestured made the phantasms vanish, turned his eyes towards the girl so quickly she had no time to switch her attention back to her book.

 

“Int’rested in strategy, Janki? Or just bored of th’ teachings of Zorian Craewley? Ya know, mortal, yer kind can’t have th’ luxury of avoidin’ their studies, lest ye be dead o’ old age before ye learn how t’ counteract aging.”

 

Jankiize squirmed under his piercing blue gaze but closed the tome titled “Illusionary and Distractonary Conjurings – from cantrips to rituals, by Zorian Craewley”.

 

“I’ve been here half a year now, uncle. When are we going to get the Grail? And how are you going to defeat the Steam Army?”

 

“’S not that easy, m’lady. If I could crush them with a slash of Pain, I would. As it is, any move I could make would make ‘em realize my presence, an’ I’m sure they already have a faint idea of somethin’ opposin’ them, with th’ work th’ Grail’s been doin’ against ‘em. When that’d happen, they’d call for more forces, make this place a true battlefield in th’ Eternal War. In th’ end, th’ way things stand, this whole place would be obliterated from th’ multiversum, leavin’ only a dead desert of white, perfect sand behind th’ departing forces of Law.”

 

The girl nodded thoughtfully and let her spell go, landed deftly despite the weight of her armor and deposited the heavy book on the table. She found an empty chair and sat down, looked up to the Dreamer’s face.

 

“That wasn’t an answer, uncle, and you know it.”

 

“Ha, ye didn’t answer my questions either, m’lady. But as ye wish – we shall get th’ Grail when either I risk everythin’ an’ try to strike past th’ wards that protect it, or when I risk myself in a frontal, all-out assault on th’ Steam Army. I’ve been preparin’ for both eventualities, an’ right now I’d wager crushin’ th’ Army is th’ better o’ th’ two plans.”

 

“But how?”

 

She pointed towards the map, disbelieving look on her face.

 

“I mean, there’s so many of them. We have here, what, thirty warriors? I know you can last against forces like that for a long time, but there’s just one of you!”

 

“Ah ya, one of me, thirty of my warriors, ‘nother seventy or so waitin’ nearby, an’ then th’ forces Chaos has trusted me with. Ya know, me, th’ Scourrrge o’ Planes, Slayerrr o’ th’ Myrmidon, th’ wily Godslayerrr?”

 

She could not help but giggle at the faces the Dreamer made as he listed his titles. As he turned back towards the map she stopped and watched intently as he outlined his basic strategies with gestures and translucent illusions.

 

“Here’s where I’d attack, an’ they’d send these troops against me assumin’ whoever commands that army would not see through my disguise, at which point there’d be an Astral portal approximately here, see? An’ at that point as th’ seventy o’ my forces would use that portal an’ hit the Army there, th’ troops I’d managed to wrestle away from th’ Chaos high command would strike ‘ere, an’ a planewalker or no planewalker on th’ other side, it’d be th’ end of it, ya?”

 

“I see. So, what are you waiting for, uncle?”

 

He dismissed the illusions and sat back, shrugged.

 

“I’m lackin’ th’ troops from th’ Chaos army I’d need. War’s not goin’ well, an’ ‘s hard to get any troops for own use, especially to a far-away place like this. Which reminds me – I should get goin’, have to meet Chaos high command before situation gets too bad either here or out there an’ the trip’ll be pointless.”

 

The planewalker stood up briskly and started to walk towards the stairs that lead to the topmost room of the tower. Frozen by his sudden move Jankiize could only stare after him, then sprang up towards the Dreamer with an miserable look on her face. He heard her footsteps and turned back to see what more there was to discuss.

 

“Uncle! You are going now?”

 

“Ya?”

 

She calmed down but looked disappointed.

 

“I was just thinking that you’d stay a while. It’s been a long time since you last told me a story.”

 

He shrugged and motioned her to follow him, started walking again with slower pace.

 

“There’ll be time for stories later, Grail Carrier. This must be done now, an’ ‘s good ye reminded me of it, really.”

 

“But … but I need help with my studies, and we haven’t had a practice fight in ages, and you still haven’t finished the lesson about sealing runes you promised to finish. Besides, I have no money, uncle.”

 

As she spoke, they had arrived to the highest room of the tower. A portal to Astral stood in the middle of it, with several small windows to different planes floating all around it. Two bored demons leaned to the walls, muttering with each other in their own language. Portholes to every direction let in faint beams of natural blue moonlight from outside. The Dreamer paused at the threshold of the portal, plunged his hand into Astral, drew it back with a cold, frost-covered platinum coin he wordlessly gave to Jankiize, ruffled her hair, muttered something along the lines of “ya, later” and stepped through. Jankiize kicked the stony side of the gate and glared into its blue depths.

 

“I hate you, anyways.”

 

Ignoring the two snickering demons, she slowly drifted to one of the portholes and looked out. The view was quite magnificient from here: the tower was tall and built on a rocky overhang higher than the town, so you could see Arkstâd from above, the dark red ocean of lava and the black desert of stone. Early autumn air was thick with algae floating in the life-giving ocean’s thermals, giving everything far enough a murky green hue, and she could see wyvern-riders and the small black dots of gulls, the bluish disc of the bigger moon glowing over it all. She turned her eyes skyward, noted the few rare stars that had enough brilliancy to shine through the green veil of algae and the heat distortions and let her gaze slip past them, to the dark night sky.

 

Somewhere beyond the sky her uncle ran on his mysterious errands.

Edited August 26, 2004 by Zadown

[Zadown]

Fourteen B

 

The shape of the place he was looking for unfolded in the Void before him, black on black, invisible. Just an innocent looking stretch of nothing to most. Last time, he had needed a key, back when he had still walked the middle road or an illusion of it. A lifetime ago, almost. This time he was a key, and he stepped through the unseen wall without an effort.

 

From the darkness to the light, again. This place has called me to it ever since I joined this war, but this is the first time for me to enter the Courts of Chaos as a full member.

 

Behind him was the wall to the Void, showing a surface as dark and mundane as it had done from the outside. It looked like a perfect window - you couldn't see it, but it was there, a barrier between him and the empty, free Void, a block between him and his Paths.

 

Before him – the Chaos Fortress.

 

It was as he remembered it, indescribable in its constant rotating change, holding no form for long. It showed him proud stone castles with their towers and battlements filled with bronze statues of maids twisting in abject horror, pyramids of ice glowing with green, phosphorus sigils proclaiming the end of the known multiversum, great spheres of water filled with fiery salamanders crawling through them hissing steam and curses. Now, marked with chaos and finally beginning to master his taint, he could see past the half-truths of these visions, and as he felt his eyes pulse in the same, erratic rhythm as the fortress, he knew he would be able to enter it without going insane.

 

He felt the benign brush of the watchdogs on his wards, gave them the equivalent of a tiny nod and waited. He did not have to wait for long before there was a flash of light, and the Avatar of Chaos appeared, smiling as she stretched her newly created, naked body. She had leathery wings with beautiful white feathers here and there, big, eerie, blue eyes with fiery red sparks inside them, dark horns protruding from between white hair and a shiny coppery skin that glistened in the glow of the Fortress.

 

“Welcome back, little one. Still not finished with our mission, have you? Ignoring our wishes, not content with what power we have given you, are you?”

 

Her voice was sharpness and satin, the meow of a cat that has already eaten and is still hunting, contempt and pleasure.

 

“Ye know I would not dare to ignore ya, Chaos. An’ ye know th’ task ye gave me, back when I was young an’ back when I declined it, ‘s not a trivial one. As a matter of fact, I’m close.”

 

The Herald of Chaos laughed, a sound both beautiful and cruel, bared her sharp teeth and forked language.

 

“Excuses, immortal boy, always excuses. But you amuse us, for now. You may go, and squabble with the others in the Fortress, plead them to help and stave off their pleas and cries. Go forth and make us proud, little Godslayer.”

 

She gestured lazily and was gone without a boom or a flash, let her visible avatar vanish. The Dreamer could still feel her watching him, smiling a smile that could change into a lethal bite if he’d make any mistakes here. He floated through the chaos-tainted space towards the fortress … now a twisting maze of screaming flesh, now a mansion made of bones … and opened his mind carefully to the odd sensations that surrounded him here. With care, also, he floated into the everchanging sphere of the Chaos Fortress, navigated his way through the outer layers of deception and confusion. For a moment, all he saw with his eyes were shifting, dancing colors creating no obvious patterns, then he landed on a solid, real stone floor, archdemon guards sizing him up and giving him a grudging approval. A being looking like a thin floating purple robe with thick, glistening dark tentacles sprouting from inside the hood approached him and rasped a few half-formed words of welcome in a language in which saying anything positive was a feat of linguistics, Àlankhân:

 

“Greetings, oh being I will not destroy quite yet, Duke Wodzan Xe Chanima of Chaos.”

 

“Heya, demon.”

 

“Chaos high command has been waiting for you, Scourge of the Planes. This way, lest you desire to be flayed alive and be fed to the lemurs, Duke.”

 

The Dreamer grinned, his eyes shimmering in dark colors. Speaking to high ranking demons, the only ones who dared to use Àlankhân, the language of the masters, was always refreshing. So many either did not know him or feared him, tried to avoid him or opposed him that to talk with somebody who challenged him with every sentence without drawing its weapon made him feel more awake than most battles.

 

“I will walk into your trap, demon, only to tear it and you apart with my bare, bloodsoaked hands. Show the way, so I can slice you open from behind when you try to betray me.”

 

The demon’s tentacles slithered against each other, a rustling sound that was the closest thing of laughter he’d ever heard from their kind. It rotated sluggishly around and glided deeper into the fortress, the planewalker walking closely behind it. The insides of the fortress were not quite as confusing as its outward appearance, but the corridors and stairways, portals and doorways still defied gravity and other laws of nature with mocking ease. In some rooms even the dimensions and time had given in, and the Dreamer saw a future version of himself walk towards him along the roof of a large hall, nodding to him but looking grim and dissatisfied. The hallways and rooms were mostly empty and the few entities they saw did not pay any attention to them. This was not a fortress to store troops in or a bastion of war, and the two nobles of some distant Hell at the door were the closest thing to servants or guards this place seemed to have. The gliding robe before him was a powerful demon lord, that was obvious from the language it used alone. They reached a tall pair of doors, both painted with hundreds of tiny scenes from the Eternal War, and the planewalker noted with a faint smile that in a far corner of that iconostasis was a small picture of him challenging the Myrmidon to a duel to the death. The demon gestured and the doors swung open, revealing the heart of the fortress – the Room of Maps.

[Zadown]

The room that opened before the Dreamer was huge, its far corners shrouded in rust-colored mist. In the middle of it were several massive tables of stone and wood and bone, covered in three-dimensional maps of the Paths, two-dimensional maps of the key planes and four-dimensional maps that showed the inexorable advance of the white tendrils of Law’s armies through time and space. Around the maps moved the solemn figures of the Chaos high command, planewalkers, demigods of chaos, archdukes of various hells and other powerful creatures that had fought and intrigued their way through the ranks. Many of them turned to look when he entered, or let their senses brush him briefly, and some greeted him discreetly. He noted the presence of Sir Golden who had been with him in the attempt to bring back the Maiden of Daggers, Owiric, his old rival and current uneasy ally and Ghavel, commander of the area of the Eternal War the Grail was, and several others he knew somewhat well: Averrellius, Duke Slaqûar, Xerzes of Hellfire, Chirm the Whip. The Dreamer started to walk towards Ghavel, who watched his approach impassively, when he noticed a planewalker moving with a retinue of half a dozen people he did not know moving to intercept him.

 

The planewalker leading that ragtag group of young followers gave the Dreamer a challenging look and approached closer than was polite. He was wearing a bizarre combination of black leather, dark metal and crimson satin, an attire that his followers had obviously tried to copy but were even less successful at not looking like fools than their leader. He had short black hair, two pale scars on his moderately handsome face, one more showing on his left hand – from his belt hung a rapier and various daggers, tied to his back was a sturdy broadsword. His mouth turned downwards to a sneering smile as he made a mocking bow.

 

“Welcome, Scourge o’ th’ Planes. We’ve been bereft of yer company for far too long, m’lord.”

 

The Dreamer’s eyes flashed purple and he bared his teeth in response, even less a smile than what the other planewalker had on his face.

 

“An’ who ‘s this royal ‘we’, whelp?”

 

The young planewalker grinned, turned his back to the Dreamer as he surveyed the faces of his followers showing feigned shock on his and slowly turned back.

 

“He does not recognize me, my lovlies! It seems that my fame has not had time to spread all ‘round th’ Paths yet, those who still live in small caves an’ tiny barrels at the far reaches beyond Borderlands do not know me! Well, well – but allow me to fix this unfortunate lack in yer lore, m’lord Dreamer. Baron Tlaiv de Varmeghast, at yer service.”

 

He repeated his bow as his followers laughed, some openly and without care and some nervously, watching the Dreamer warily. All color trained from the Dreamer’s eyes leaving them as two dark pits in the face of a pale skull. Some tiny part of him whispered words of warning, but he paid no heed to it. At the centre of both his black eyes a red flame flickered, then exploded. Hissing, faint forms of his anger already manifesting around him as he drew more ambient magic than he needed, he replied.

 

“Yer name ‘s unknown, whelp, an’ yer tools of war are untested on any field o’ war I’ve seen, child. Stand aside an’ finish this foolery or gain one more scar.”

 

Tlaiv grinned again, this time with an edge to his mien. He ignored the flickering ghosts of wrath hovering around the Dreamer, the red eyes that glared at him, and continued with a mocking, dangerous tone.

 

“So ye reply to my little jests, m’lord? I’d think ye’d have a bit more magnanimity in ye, under all those scars of lost fights. Spare me of tryin’ to find an unscar’d spot to mark, Hermit.”

 

By now everybody was watching the two, tension in the air almost palpable. The Dreamer was dimly aware of Owiric’s warning gesture, Sir Golden’s malevolent laughter, but his world shrunk to contain only himself and the insolent pup in front of him and all outwardly distractions disappeared. Lightning grew from his fingers to form two sets of crackling, sparkling claws he used to tear a gash into the air, drawing forth from the black wound a long, unruly bolt of lightning that danced between his two outstretched hands. In its light his baleful face was an absurd collection of lights and shadows, the scars breaking it apart. Tlaiv had time to only draw his rapier, which looked thin and useless illuminated by the Dreamer’s display of raw power, before the bolt of lightning tore through the air with a thunderous boom and crashed on Tlaiv’s wards, vaporizing the outermost of them in one blow. All that happened so fast a mortal could’ve missed it with a blink. The following display of swordsmanship was no less hectic, the Dreamer cracking open Tlaiv’s defense with brutal ease and slashing open his remaining wards with a few wide sweeping blows. Just as he was about to gash open Tlaiv’s body and leave him a scar to remember, Tlaiv tossed his rapier aside and cowered before him, his attitude changing in an instant. Confused by this un-planewalkery move the Dreamer hesistated enough that Tlaiv had time to whimper in a shocked, miserable voice.

 

“Mercy! A merest jest an’ ye are ready to shredder my youn’ skin!? I ‘ad heard ye are brutal an’ unpredictable monster, but I tried to prove everybody here th’ rumourmon’ers are wron’ an’ mistaken. Alas, they were proven right instead.”

 

The crowd around them, most of the bystanders far away but watching intently with their augmented senses, seemed to think this was it, that the score was even. They started to turn away, to comment some aspect of the fight with their neighbours, when the Dreamer took a relaxed step forward and swung his great spectral sword with both hands, slicing open Tlaiv’s jerkin and drawing a shallow but long wound that bled blood and dreams. Tlaiv’s mock fear was replaced with a real disbelief as he grabbed the wound and stared up from his kneeling position. His followers fingered their swords and maces, scimitars and axes in a manner that suggested they were ready to declare this ending foul and wrong by their own strength, but the Dreamer’s stern and cold stare broke their bloodlust before it had time to properly raise.

 

“Let it be, ‘prentices. ‘Tis not a planewalker’s way to go against one with many, not in manners of honour. Let it be.”

 

They returned his cold stares, but said no words as they dragged their wounded and muttering leader away, leaving a dark stain on the stone floor – not the first nor the last of such stains, here. He broadened the circle of his cold, remorseless gaze, and saw hostility, approval, disinterest and thoughtfulness in response, noting carefully to the vaults of his memory who reacted in which way. This appraisal was broken by the arrival of Owiric, who glared openly at the Dreamer and hissed with a voice that was a whisper to him but loud enough to be clearly heard by anybody curious.

 

“Are ye mad, Wodzan? Do ye seek yer doom here? Do ye know who that was, ye rock-headed idiot?”

 

“That was a fool, Sir Owiric of Chaos – what of him?”

 

“Ye know who commands th’ troops in yer own area of War, fool? Ghavel de Varmeghast, he does. De Varmeghast, ya!”

 

That’s what the warning gesture was for. So much for getting any troops for my plan ... wonder if that was the exact purpose of this scene?

[Zadown]

“I fathom that askin’ him for reinforcements to my private war effort ‘s out of th’ question, then?”

 

“Ya, even yer dim-wit’d mind seems t’ be able to comprehend th’ consequences of yer littl’ duel. What is this private war effort of yers, say? Ye’ve been rarely at th’ front line, lately.”

 

The Dreamer shrugged, made an empty gesture and turned towards Owiric, stopped walking.

 

“I’d tell ya if I could, Sir Owiric, but all I can say ‘s that ‘twas ordain’d by th’ Avatar o’ Chaos herself. An’ that it might turn th’ tide of the Eternal War, it really might.”

 

Owiric glowered back, pointed at the Dreamer with his armoured finger.

 

“Ye an’ yer mad schemes! ‘Tis ‘nother Maiden o’ Daggers disaster yer plannin’, neh?”

 

The tall, scarred planewalker swatted the accusing finger aside and sighed in a bored manner. He stared directly in the dark eyes, his deep blue gaze locked with Owiric’s.

 

“’Twas almost a success, an’ even if th’ beast we would’ve unlock’d would’ve been too much, it’d still been better than what is goin’ on at the moment. There’s no predecent, not in th’ last twenty thousand years at least, for this chapter o’ th’ Eternal War. We are losin’, old rival. ‘Tis soon a multiversum ruled by th’ cold, still, dead an’ static Law.”

 

“So ye say, an’ stay behind, not fightin’ th’ war to prevent that, ye knave. Ye tryin’ to escape to th’ Parallels an’ need troops for that? Ye should know better than that, th’ Dreamer – nobody’s ever returned, never.”

 

A wan smile and a negative gesture were his answers, then he glanced briefly to all directions and leaned closer to Owiric.

 

“Naw, not that, tho’ I must admit I have thought o’ that as last resort, when th’ fight’s reachin’ th’ Borderlands in twenty years. I still cannot say, but if ye could spare some troops…”

 

Owiric struck the Dreamer with a gauntleted fist, a blow that sent him reeling despite his wards.

 

“YER darin’ to ask ME!? Well there’s a lark!”

 

In the depths of his full helm, Owiric winked in a way only the Dreamer noticed. Thinking quickly he took a step backwards and forced his eyes to shimmer and change, to turn black.

 

“Keep yer lemurs then, ye mollusc – I bet they’ve been train’d to flee at th’ first sight of an enemy, ye craven, inept ser’eant! I’d scar ya, but I don’t want to stain my blade on yer poltroon blood.”

 

“Thrice-damned trouble-maker! De Varmeghast was right, all ye can think with is yer blade, an’ yer not good even with it.”

 

Owiric made a well-known insulting gesture and marched away, leaving behind sneering the Dreamer who slowly lowered his hands from the hilt of Pain. The Dreamer muttered half-formed insults and marched away towards the gates of the Fortress. Despite the fact he was sure Owiric had something in mind with all this, he felt his spirits plummet. No troops, not a lot of allies here and from his cursory glance at the maps, the war was going even worse than he had thought. He nodded silently to the Dreamer of the past who was being escorted towards the Room of Maps, knowing how grim and unsatisfied he must look. Nobody tried to stop him for a talk or a challenge as he walked through the hallways and corridors; even the two archdemons at the gate only nodded to him. He stepped through the gate and glided through the space between the Chaos Fortress, changing and rotating behind him, and the door back to the Paths, submerged in his thoughts. There, once again back in the Void, he paused to look forward, towards the heart of the multiversum, where countless pearls of distant planes glimmered against the black velvet background of the nothingness between the worlds. Arkstâd called him – it’d be good to be home, at the centre of his own web of power, and he needed to figure out a way to get the Grail without staining Jankiize in the process, without letting the damned cup get away again … and yes, he had promised her to finish that lesson about sealing runes.

 

He turned around, stared at the twisted knot of nothing that marked the hidden door to the Chaos Fortress.

 

If Owiric really intends to meet me here, he’d better hurry. He is too slow and too blind to follow me once I start running.

 

His instincts whispered to him words of warning, unintelligible but urgent, and he responded by whispering words of magic, cloaking himself in a pocket of Void so any clumsy search would miss him, any planewalker in a hurry would run past. Having made his choice, the Dreamer resigned for a long wait and was preparing to enter a light trance when the door opened again. Somebody ran out wearing an enchantment that blurred his or her ward signature, obscured the form and shape of the body. The Dreamer could feel the crudeness of the spell. He knew it would have fooled any mortal, anywhere, but he saw through most of it even without really trying, in the short time he had before the entity sped past him towards the more civilized portions of the Paths.

 

One of young De Varmeghast’s followers, I’m sure. Now there’s a story I should hear someday, what do they do there and how, exactly, is their leader related to old Ghavel.

 

Storing the questions for later, he let himself fall into the trance.

 

* * *

 

The Dreamer blinked, emerging from the trance to full wakefulness in one, disorienting instant. For a brieft moment he could still see his thoughts and memories floating in front of his mind’s eye, clouds on the stormy sky of his inner realms, then he focused his eyes on the expectant figure of Owiric. The warlord was look at his direction but not directly at where he was hiding – the Dreamer suppressed a grin and let the enchantment fade, the grin re-appearing on his face when he saw the glare on Owiric’s face, the warlord realizing he had not been accurate in his estimation of the Dreamer’s location. Owiric growled a greeting, stepping closer.

 

“There ye are, damn’d nuisance of an ally.”

 

“Heya, Sir Owiric. So, what was all that about, ye knave?”

 

Owiric’s face turned more serious and weary and he gestured towards the door with more helplessness than the Dreamer had seen in the warrior since he had killed Owiric’s apprentice.

 

“Th’ things aren’t right, here. Ye think ‘s all about th’ Law’s strength, but naw, that’s not it … ‘s also ‘bout th’ weakness of Chaos. That mockery o’ a duel ye went through’s just a small part of what ‘s going on, an’ Chaos bein’ Chaos, well. There’s not much hope for it, th’ Chaos itself, intervenin’.”

 

“I see. Strife weakenin’ our ranks? Chaos bein’ … chaotic?”

 

“Mock me all ye wish, bastard. That’s how things are, an’ ye’ve been better off stayin’ away from th’ Courts. Ye done with th’ insults, now?”

 

The grin faded from the Dreamer’s face and he nodded, suddenly solemn.

 

“Get to th’ centre of it, then.”

 

“Ye comin’ here must mean whatever yer tryin’ to do ‘s important, right? ‘Twas a quest for Chaos itself, ya?”

 

He nodded again.

 

“Well then … ye have no hope in Hell to get any troops from here, ye know. Yer chances were slim t’ begin with, an’ that scene with De Varmeghast just ‘bout buried yer slim chances.”

 

“Ya, so? Ye happen to know some place I can get one thousand o’ th’ Chaos’s best warriors in a month or two, hmm?”

 

“Ye need a thousand? That does sound like yer tryin’ to break through the Impenetrable Walls to th’ Parallels, it really does.”

 

“Ye really think th’ Chaos would ask me to leave her in a time like this with as many troops I can muster? I wish, but naw.”

 

Owiric’s eyes narrowed inside his full helmet and he muttered, in a voice that was still as loud as normal speaking voice.

 

“I could get ya two hundred.”

[Zadown]

Fifteen

 

He could feel the bland taint of Law the moment he stepped through the portal back to his tower in Arkstâd. The Dreamer’s blue eyes darkened and he drew his sword, dreading at first that he had been away for too long, that the Steam Army had overrun the meagre defenses and was already here, the fight already lost. A quick look around told him everything seemed alright, the guards at their posts and the wards active. That did not change the oppressive feeling of the taint hanging over the tower like stormclouds. He sheathed Pain and took the stairway downward to find Jankiize. A moment later, he found her engrossed in trying to maintain a small portal open, the difficult magic trying to constantly slide away from her control.

 

“That seems a mite hazardous to try alone, m’lady.”

 

Startled by the sound, Jankiize lost the last remains of control over the portal she had and it trembled for a moment, then collapsed into itself with a tortured, raspy groan. She turned to look at him with a mixed look of joy and accusation.

 

“If you’d been here to teach me, uncle, I wouldn’t have tried that alone. I’m sure I could’ve done it fine too, it just seems magic is … harder to use, lately.”

 

She casually slammed the grimoire shut she had been using for her experiment and took a step towards the Dreamer, who was looking past Jankiize, through the walls of the tower.

 

“’Tis th’ Law, m’lady. Even ye should rec’nize their taint when ‘tis this bad – th’ one-dimensional, flat blandness that reduces all th’ possibilities to one, to th’ most probable outcome. It cripples th’ Art, as we work with th’ unprobable an’ impossible.”

 

His dark blue eyes turned briefly to regard Jankiize, then dropped to the title of the large black tome and changed their color to grey. The Dreamer’s voice was chilly and uncharateristicly precise in its intonation when he spoke again.

 

“Aczaer Planebinder’s “Theories on Astral, the Impenetrable Wall and Parallels”? I was studying that, young lady, I certainly did not mean it to be study material. It is far too dangerous.”

 

Jankiize’s face held no signs of repentance as she met the Dreamer’s look.

 

“You left it lying around your table with all the other books. How was I supposed to know? It was very interesting, too – you have talked a lot about the multiversum, but nothing about the meta-multiversum, the parallels and the Impenetrable Wall…”

 

The Dreamer’s darkening eyes silenced her, eventually.

 

“Nobody has ever returned. Most planewalkers have died trying to open the portal, the last, permanent and utter Death, because they have lacked the power to break through and so they have lent their own lifeforce to the spell. That’s planewalkers, immortal wizards who breathe, drink and eat the very essence of magic and who have studied for hundreds or thousands of years before trying. You’ll leave that particular tome and all others pertaining to the same subject alone, young lady.”

 

Jankiize stared at the planewalker with open defiance.

 

“That’s so like you, uncle.”

 

“Ya?”

 

“You are gone for almost two months, and when you return the first thing you do is to scold me for trying to get somewhere with my studies without you. It is not easy, you know, to try to learn magic from moldy old tomes or to practice fencing with the troops. As for that platinum, it’s almost all gone. I would’ve had to sell something soon.”

 

The Dreamer had the sense to look faintly abashed and he took a half-step backwards as Jankiize stepped closer, looking angry, her voice accusatory.

 

“Oh. Well, I’m back now.”

 

“About time, uncle. Fish me some gold, I need new clothes unless you want me to walk around in rags. And it’d be nice to buy meat, haven’t had any money for that since I started to conserve the little I had, not knowing when if ever you’ll be back.”

 

“As ye wish.”

 

He shrugged and plunged his hands into the flow of the Astral, snatching a few gold coins from the depths of the Paths and handed them to Jankiize. His eyes were still grey as she snatched the icy gold from him and stormed away, tense and angry.

 

* * *

 

“Heya, Nemue!”

 

“Hi, Janki!”

 

The two young women waved to each other and then dashed to meet, the hubbub of the marketplace continuing unabated around them. They did not even try to talk right away, instead walking away from the worst noise and thickest crowds. Once they reached the narrow, cool alley of tailors and textile merchants, they finally agreed it was quiet enough to chat.

 

“Guess what, Nemue?”

 

“What? You finally ran out of money and need my help to find a buyer for something?”

 

“No, no! He is back! No more skimping!”

 

“Ha, about time. Criminal, leaving you alone for so long with so little money … what did he think you’d do to get more?”

 

“He doesn’t think, that’s it. I’m not even sure if he has ever been mortal. He doesn’t eat or drink anymore, that’s for sure.”

 

Nemue shivered melodramatically.

 

“He gives me the creeps. Can’t understand how you can stand him, living in the same house … those scars, and the way his eyes change color, and the odd armor that moves around, brrrr!”

 

Jankiize looked away, upwards to the clear, blue winter sky. She tried to keep the bitterness away from her voice, to entertain the notion she did not care, but she couldn’t manage it.

 

“It’s easy, him not being at home ever, really … he comes from some far corner of the multiversum, stinking of blood, mutters something about the Eternal War, tosses a few coins at my direction and leaves right away. The perfect father, ha.”

 

Nemue gave her a sympathetic look. For a while they walked on in silence, not really aiming their steps anywhere. They ended up near Nemue’s home and by silent agreement they continued to that direction.

 

“Hi, girls!”

 

“Heya, aunt Gahlia!”

 

“Hi, mom.”

 

“I’m making mushroom pies – if you can give me a hand, you can have some. And Janki, for Grail’s sake, take off that armor here. Don’t know what your uncle is thinking, making you wear it all the time…”

[Zadown]

The wailing, mournful cry of wyvern-rider horns broke the calm of the drowsy winter afternoon. It was not the normal one long note that told of approaching glass storm, however. The cry ceased, started again and ceased, a different signal. Another replied to it, repeating the same pattern of short wails and short pauses, and when the bells of the Brotherhood of Armageddon responded to the alarm, it was with a series of smaller bells ringing a tinkling weave of sound that had never been heard before. Right then Jankiize realized the taint of the Law had grown worse and she jumped up from the chair she had been sitting on, drinking after-dinner tea with Nemue, and started to put her armor back on with frantic speed.

 

“That’s no glass storm! It’s the Law this time, I can feel it.”

 

“So? We are still best off staying here. The wyvern guard will repel any attack … hey? Hey!?”

 

Jankiize turned to leave, did not pause to explain but waved one last time at the door, then ran off to the streets where guards were already running towards the gates, civilians away from them. Nemue stayed behind, opened her mouth to shout something but thought better of it, shrugged in frustration and slammed the heavy door shut. The narrow streets were in chaos as people who usually would have sought the nearest shelter tried to get as far away as possible or to their own home. Jankiize dodged her way through, grasping the sheath and hilt of her katana with white knuckles. She tried to mutter a cantrip that’d given her some extra speed but the overwhelming presence of the Law made her stutter, the spell fizzle uselessly. The young woman gritted her teeth and kept running in her heavy armor, ignored both the jostles and the shouts she got. As she got closer to the Dreamer’s tower, the crowd got thinner and she pressed on running faster, sweat streaming down her face. When she reached the path that wound upwards from the town to their tower, she allowed herself to stop once, to turn around to see what was happening while she panted.

 

The streets were mostly clear by now, sky thick of wyvern guards and the city walls thick with bright helmets, shining spears glittering in the sunlight, colourful pennants flying. Far, far away she could see a wide cloud of dust – that and the oppressive, bland gloom the two only signs of the enemy. She looked again, paying attention to every little detail: the dark red stone towers of Arkstâd, round and well-fortified against glass storms and traditional enemies; the black gulls crying and circling as usual, not caring about the strifes of men; the clear, thin winter sky, a few errant clouds here and there only emphasizing the light blue color of it; the long, sleek forms of the graceful wyverns, clumsy on ground but beautiful and agile while flying.

 

She turned around again and ran the last part of the path to the tower. The door felt heavy after her run and the wards on it seemed to pulse feebly as she opened it instead of the usual bright display. Jankiize looked relieved to see the Dreamer, who was staring towards the monastery of the Brotherhood of Armageddon through a porthole. His eyes were dark blue, almost black, and he had the vacant look of somebody who was not fully in his body. Jankiize walked slowly closer, realized she was still gripping her sword more tightly than needed and relaxed her grasp. When she got close enough to see the ripples in the air that marked the borders of the planewalker’s wards, she whispered.

 

“Uncle?”

 

She could see him return, his mind slowly reeling back in. His eyes turned lighter, more blue, and the vacant look disappeared. Finally he blinked slowly and luxuriously and turned to look at her.

 

“Ya, Janki?”

 

“You are going to stop them, aren’t you?”

 

“Ya? Oh, th’ Steam Army. Actually, I don’t have to. ‘Tis ironic, but th’ advancin’ taint o’ Law has done my work for me an’ reduced th’ old wards Arenogh of th’ Many Faces left behind. We can just march in to the monastry an’ take th’ Grail.”

 

Jankiize had first frowned but now her face was a mask of dismay.

 

“What!? You said you’d attack them, that you’d go get reinforcements! We can’t just steal their Grail now that they need it the most!”

 

Purple appeared in the Dreamers eyes but he looked more perplexed than furious. He did not seem to understand why she was angry.

 

“Steal, m’lady? ‘S hardly theirs, to begin with – ‘tis a vagrant artefact, here just because this place happens to fulfil th’ proper criteria for its appearance. A small outpost o’ Chaos, beset by unstoppable forces of Law. All that ‘s just theory, in any case. We are here to get it, to use it for all o’ th’ Chaos, not just this small town here in th’ middle of nowhere.”

 

Jankiize’s eyes narrowed and she raised her voice.

 

“They are depending on you, uncle! You are their Lord of Chaos, the one the prophecies of the Brotherhood talked about. If you intend to just take the Grail and flee the Steam Army, you can figure out a way to do it without me. Pact or no pact, I’m not helping you to carry away their last hope!”

 

The perplexity on the planewalker’s face deepened, his eyes shimmered and changed color to green.

 

“Ye’d truly risk th’ pact for this town of no consequence? I was under th’ impression parents mattered a lot to ye mortals, even more than those glitterin’ pieces of metal yer kind hoards.”

 

“They do! The people in this town matter to me, too! And I will see both saved.”

 

The Dreamer sighed and smiled wanly, without any humor or warmth. He looked down at the girl and spoke with serious tones.

 

“Ye will, will ya? Ye’ll order my four hundred troops against that vast army, duel whoever leads them, slaughter th’ human an’ gnome engineers on th’ opposin’ side with yer strategic brilliance an’ ancient knowled’e o’ war? Ye’ll resurrect yer parents?”

 

Her voice was quiet but as serious as his had been and she withstood the Dreamer’s gaze, stared upwards without wavering.

 

“No. You will, uncle. You will.”

[Zadown]

The earth rumbled and shook. The wall cracked but held, the warriors on top of it muttering and cursing aloud, their mood gloomy but grimly determined. Some of them glanced sideways at the short girl in bronze-colored scalemail but nobody said anything. Then the bleakness evaporated as if a breeze had gone through the troops, guards clamouring with renewed faith as somebody moved through them. Jankiize turned to look towards the disturbance, strained to hear the shouts. As it got closer, she managed to make sense out of the mixed voices.

 

“Lord of Chaos! For the Chaos! Magic’s on our side!”

 

She sighed inwardly and stood still, watching the shouts and the tall figure in the middle of the disturbance move nearer at a steady, fast pace. Finally the Dreamer emerged from the group of guards clustered around him and stopped near the girl, gave her a dark grey stare. Jankiize withstood it as always, waved towards the Steam Army.

 

“So you finally came to put stop to this, uncle?”

 

“Naw, I came to retrieve ye – ‘tis not safe for ye, here. I shouldn’t be here either, in enemy’s clear view, but ye forced my hand.”

 

The troops had grown quiet and were now a silent, attentive audience. New emotions swept through them like wind rustling reeds as the Dreamer and Jankiize talked, the conversation spreading further by whispers that mutated the message more and more every yard they travelled. The Steam Army joined the dialogue with a barrage, their mortars and steam-powered siege guns striking closer to their mark this time, made the wall tremble. Some of the huge shells had been loaded with smoke ammo, which created a huge cloud of white steam that hid the Steam Army’s vanguard from sight. Only two pairs of eyes were able to penetrate the bank of man-made fog, and they both saw how the warmachines rolled forward, hid by the noise and smoke of the artillery.

 

“Uncle! They are coming!”

 

“I know, Li’tl’ Princess. An’ ye shall have yer battle, then, even if it might ruin all my plans an’ doom us in th’ end.”

 

The Dreamer leaped down from the wall and vanished into the cloud of smoke and dust, the nearest few guards cheering him on before readying their crossbows, spears and polearms. They were outmatched by the mechanical monstrosities of the Law but ready to fight, part of their morale leaning on the fact they had never seen what the steam-powered warmachines could do. Even through the obscuring clouds, four pinpoints of light showed, four towers of the wall alight with the bluish-green fire of magic. Jankiize knew that could not be her uncle. It felt all wrong, even more chaotic, weaker but warmer magic than the Dreamer’s cold and exact Art. She felt the flows of magic connect to those four points, others fluctuating and shifting somewhere ahead in ways her second sight was too weak to decipher. Jankiize blinked to switch back to the normal vision, felt the beginnings of a headache. The clouds were receding, but the opposing army was still mere approaching vague shapes at best. Then the clouds turned red as a muted roar rose from somewhere near the middle of the ranks, a fiery explosion flung men and metal to every direction. This time the whole wall full of wyvern guard cheered, some of them pointing towards the wreckage left behind by the Dreamer’s flashy spell, some pointing elsewhere. Jankiize tried to see what else could be as interesting as the wake of rampaging planewalker, but could not see anything before she augmented her eyes with an enchantment, spoken through gritted teeth as the taint of the Law tried to smother her.

 

There, running between the rocks and hiding behind bits of smoking metal, she saw them: small goblin-like creatures, black thin things with long claws and big eyes, elfin ears rotating in their misshaped heads. They were leaping and bouncing, still managing to cling to the shadows and stay in the cover of the remains of the artifical cloud, coming from the four towers in steady streams. She realized what they were, recalled the picture she had seen in some dusty old grimoire listing the odd creatures of the multiversum: Phyrexian gremlins, things born with the sole purpose of disabling and destroying machines and artefacts. She still failed to figure out exactly who or what had worked the magic to summon them, but she grinned in glee when she saw the first of the Law’s warmachines run into an ambush. The gremlins stuck their indestructible claws into the tracks, climbed up along the sides and vanished into the lumbering vechile as it ground to a halt.

 

Another infernal explosion smashed a different part of the attacking army to smoldering hulks and burning bodies, but now the remaining warmachines were close enough for more accurate fire. Their long snouts sprouted fire and black smoke, the shells scoring direct hits against the wall this time, the explosions bringing down portions of the old wall, shrapnel and stones cutting and crushing waiting warriors. The blood and gore was too much for some and they ran or trembled in place, paralysed with fear, shouted in terror or in agony, screams that nobody heard in the cacophony. Fireballs arched above, the four mysterious spellcasters turning their Art now to direct attacking, and the gremlins rushed forward below, immoblizing and breaking down tanks and golems, biting and clawing men.

 

Jankiize was frozen in place. The vivid reality of war was too much for her, the blood running over the stone wall and the shrill, almost inhuman cries of the wounded, dying and mentally broken. She had had so clear idea of what she’d do when she had first decided to come here with the troops, and now that idealistic image had irrevocably broken, tainted with blood and anguish. Her hands trembled holding the sheath of her katana, and she slowly fell on her knees staring at them without comprehending what she saw. Jankiize drifted away from the horrors of the battlefield, but the escape was only temporary. When she came to, she saw a guard shouting something to her. She tried to concentrate and managed to make sense of the previously meaningless sounds.

 

“… you should leave, miss! Can you hear me? Miss?”

 

Jankiize stood up groggily, frowned at the crater nearby that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and glanced at the battlefield over the guard’s shoulders. The white cloud had been replaced by black smoke created by burning oil and wrecked machines, but she could still see through such distractions with her augmented eyesight. What she saw made her let the enchantment fade and the merciful smoke cover the killing field. New explosions rocked the wall. The guard lost his footing and fell down over Jankiize, the very real physical jolt of the impact and his weight on her bringing the reality into sharper focus.

 

“Hey! Get off me!”

 

She pushed the young guard away at the same time he tried to tumble off. He barely managed to stay on the battlements, getting a good look of the fall. As the guard slowly inched away from the edge, Jankiize really saw him for the first time. He was barely older than she, his wyvern helmet lost and red-black armor dirtied. Tall but not yet sturdy, black hair turned grey by dust and plaster, no scars on the youthful face. A loud boom went off somewhere deep in the smoke and they both turned to look at the newest blossoming fireball, peering over the damaged merlon.

 

“That’s the Lord of Chaos, right?”

 

She wanted somehow explain and apologize for all the carnage but did not find any words and just nodded.

 

“Yes, that’s my uncle’s work.”

[Zadown]

Guns roared and men screamed, the wyvern guard and the Steam Army locked together in a deadly embrace. The Dreamer waved his hand and the illusion of the war froze in place, mute and tiny over the magically crafted, beautiful map.

 

“See now what I meant, m’lady? They would’ve decimat’d th’ guard, ya, but they’ll do that either case, an’ my way there’d been hardly any civilian casualties. But ye forced my hand, an’ now that we blunted their attack and bloodied their nose ‘twon’t be as pretty.”

 

Jankiize did not reply. She stood there next to the map, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped, dust and a few spatters of blood covering her armor. The little broken illusionary soldiers glared at her accusatingly, crushed and shattered by the army of Law. Her voice was small when she spoke.

 

“But … they’d conquered Arkstâd if you had taken the Grail. You’ve shown me what they can do, at their worst! Deserts with the sigil of Law burned into the very earth, with flows of magic dead … you can’t say that is better than … than what happened.”

 

She finished her words lamely and seemed to shrunk when her own words recalled to her mind what had happened, earlier. She looked like a defeated, exhausted warrior princess in all her finery and misery and the Dreamer sighed at the sight, waved towards the map, eyes grey.

 

“Ya, at their very worst. There are li’tl’ reason t’ believe they’d go to such extremities ‘ere, or was. Now that we’ve crush’d or damaged their vanguard, I wouldn’t be so sure. Th’ cards do not show too bright futures.”

 

The Dreamer snatched a card out of thin air and placed it on the table, face up and reversed. It showed a robed blonde woman sitting in lotus position, her face vague, nine golden triangular sigils of Law floating above her open palms.

 

“Th’ Nine of Law, revers’d. Loss, in other words. Not sure whose, yet, but that woman might be ye.”

 

The picture in the card shimmered and shifted, the shining sigils rotating slowly in the air under the hooded gaze of the woman. Jankiize glanced at the card.

 

“Doubt it is me, uncle. What do I have to lose?”

 

She nudged it and it started rotating, the sigils rotating to the other direction seemingly staying frozen in place. At the planewalker’s slight gesture, it spiralled upwards, turned sideways in mid-air and vanished. Jankiize followed its path and as it vanished it made her look straight into the Dreamer’s dark grey eyes. She shivered, despite having withstood those eyes so many times before, felt that they were deeper, older than usual. He did a tiny shrug.

 

“What ye have, ‘tis th’ question, neh? All ye have ye can lose.

 

Perhaps th’ theft of Grail would’ve cost ye somethin’, an’ th’ price th’ locals pay for it is th’ redemption of Chaos, th’ only way ye are pure ‘nough to carry th’ Grail. Or perhaps we are already defeated, an’ ye’d be better off readin’ that book about th’ Parallels than tryin’ to grasp th’ Grail – perhaps this multiversum’s lost to th’ Law."

 

He smiled when he finished his words, his eyes dancing through various dark colors towards light blue, and he ruffled Jankiize’s hair. She winced and tried to fix the damage he had inflicted.

 

“Why do you always look so happy when you talk about defeat, uncle? And so grim about the victories?”

 

“’Tis endless war will end at th’ last defeat an’ th’ search for meanin’ will be fullfil’d. I do not have th’ peace of mind to follow my master, th’ courage or th’ knowledge to plunge through th’ Impassable Wall or th’ cowardice to surrender. No death awaits me, puny mortal, no dreams durin’ th’ nights. There’s no rest for me an’ th’ likes of me.”

 

The Dreamer’s eyes shone with pearly white sheen and his smile was almost warm. His words shocked the girl, but the planewalker himself was as calm as she had ever seen him.

 

“Do not give me that look, young one. Th’ unicorns o’ Law an’ their snow-white armies will bathe in red before there’ll be any defeats. I will write my name in blood on their pages of history an’ my fall will mark th’ end of th’ Age of Balance, ‘twill be no sooner.”

 

* * *

 

Jankiize followed her weary feet towards Nemue’s home. They knew the way and allowed her to wallow in her own confused thoughts. The talk with the Dreamer had not helped, him having been his usual cryptic and distant self. It had merely stirred the great turmoil inside her, made her even more uncertain if what she had done had been good or bad or something between. She didn’t notice somebody was trying to catch her before she heard a shout behind her.

 

“Hey? You alright?”

 

She turned and saw a wyvern guard slowing his pace to normal walk now that she had stopped and wondered briefly what she had done that would warrant the attention of the local guard. Jankiize looked at her armor, checking if there was a larger bloodstain somewhere or some other reason she’d been halted but could not see anything. At the same time, the guard removed his full helmet and placed it under his arm. She recognized the young man then.

 

“Oh, you are the guard … from the wall.”

 

“We were almost all at the wall, but yes. Was not sure if you’d remember me, you seemed pretty … dazed back there. How are you now? I mean … did you get out alright?”

 

The rest of the squad was still sitting on a bench far behind the guard, joking and pointing at the two of them. She felt suddenly very weary, a wave of exhaustion and alienation washing over her that made the guards seem odd two-legged beasts, totally incomprehensible. Jankiize stumbled, the guard noticing it and moving closer to help, to steady her, but she waved him off with one hand and covered her face with another.

 

“I’m … alright, thanks. Just tired. You shouldn’t concern yourself with me, guard. Listen, it is all my fault.”

 

“Huh? The war and everything? We heard you and the Lord of Chaos talking, you know. It seems the other way around, it being your fault we are alive.”

 

She collected herself and gave him a tired look.

 

“It is not that simple. Or at least I don’t think it is. I don’t know …”

 

He shrugged, unconcerned, sure of his own judgement that Jankiize was on their side, and smiled.

 

“Well, for what it is worth, we … the guys that is, and me, are grateful that you got him to help. It looked pretty bad but him and the Brotherhood of Armageddon’s monks stopped them in the end … funny, you’d never have thought the monks would do anything good for this town.”

 

The girl nodded, feeling awkward and hollow being praised for an action that might have doomed the city. The short distance to Nemue’s home extended to untold miles in her weary mind and she itched to get moving before she would collapse on the street from exhaustion. Jankiize pointed at the direction she had been heading.

 

“I’d better get going.”

 

“Oh. Alright. See you, then.”

 

She gave him one last look, noticed absently how he had been fidgeting with his helmet and how he looked almost cute now with washed face and hair black instead of grey, then turned and walked away towards mushroom pies and friendly faces.

[Zadown]

The heavy door gave its usual welcoming creak as Jankiize pushed it open with what felt like her last strength. The main room of Nemue’s family’s home seemed empty, a few mushroom pies cooling next to the oven and filling the large space with their delicious scent. Around the walls were long stone benches covered in colourful rugs with a few gobelins on the walls themselves, showing that the family was fairly well off. Opposite to the oven and small table reserved for cooking was longer table, two small stone candlesticks on top of it. The sleeping mats were in a corner, rolled up for the day. Besides the mushroom pies, the room smelled of smoke, sweat and scented candles. Jankiize saw that the narrow door to the other room was open and crossed the livingroom to enter the hot glassblower’s workshop. This room was smaller, with tiny multicoloured windows that acted as advertisement of Saldar’s, Nemue’s father’s, trade. Saldar was busy working and Jankiize waved a mute hello to him right as Nemue, who had been sorting the glass shards they used as raw material, noticed her.

 

“Hey Janki! Oh, you look exhausted. Come on, let me make you some tea.”

 

“I’d love that, Nemue, thanks.”

 

The two girls walked back to the main room, Jankiize slumping down on a bench next to the table and Nemue busying herself with the tea pot. Jankiize leaned her head on her hands and yawned when Nemue brought them both cups of tea and pieces of the pie. Nemue barely touched hers, watching as Jankiize ate with growing anticipation until she could no longer contain herself.

 

“So, is it true?”

 

“Is what true?”

 

“You know! The rumours, what happened at the wall. Did you really order the Lord of Chaos to attack the Steam Army?”

 

“Huh? Who said so?”

 

“Everybody, the guards, the merchants … you are famous, girl! The saviour of Arkstâd, here drinking my tea and eating my mother’s mushroom pie.”

 

Nemue’s tone was exhilarated and her face betrayed her surprise when Jankiize just buried her face into her hands. She was even more surprised and alarmed when her friend started crying almost silently, the sobs making her armour-covered back tremble. Nemue moved around the table and hugged Jankiize, patted her shoulder while making soothing noises.

 

“Ssshhh. It must’ve been terrible, but it is over now. Everything’s going to be alright. You must be tired. Want to take a nap here, Janki?”

 

“*sniff* … yes. And no. Everything’s not going to be alright. It’ll just get worse. And it’s my fault.”

 

Jankiize started crying again, big round tears that washed the dust away from her face and fell to the stone floor.

[Zadown]

On the table lay a broken mirror and a note written with runes no local would be able to read, weighted down by fat gold coins. It said simply: “Scattered myself. When needed, I’ll be there –WXC”. Jankiize pocketed the coins absently, stared at the note hoping it could speak, say just a little more than what was written on it. Without realizing it, she spoke aloud.

 

“What does he mean, scattered himself? I can’t fight against the Steam Army all by myself!”

 

“Boss is gone, mortal. He order’d us to listen to ye ‘til he is back, Lady Jankiize Towikae Vangaijuua.”

 

Jankiize was startled by the sound, then saw it was one of the bound demon warriors who had spoken, illusion and platemail making it vaguely human-shaped. She nodded to it, waved the note.

 

“What does he mean, scattered?”

 

“’Tis planewalker’s Art of some sort, Lady. Nothin’ I’d know ‘bout. Ye need us now, do ye? There’s fifteen o’ us, thirty if ye count th’ useless whitey flyboys.”

 

“No, no. Just guard the tower, for now.”

 

“As ye say, Lady. Jus’ don’t say to him we’d disrespect ya, neh?”

 

She did not listen to the demon’s last words but looked out of the porthole, towards the unseen Steam Army.

 

* *

 

Gears blurred in his vision. Iehrewiohfbowief blinked, wondered at the sudden heavy feeling that seemed to radiate from his head to his torso and limbs. He felt suddenly all wrong, too short and too slow and too weak-eyed, shuddered.

 

“Ieh you ok old mate you seemed to nod out there for a moment is that repair done yet?”

 

“Uhm.. ya, ‘tis .. it is yes almost done I just need to fix th’ .. the last damage the gremlins did to the gears.”

 

Dagibojdfragsonijobvad, his directly superior gnome in the repair troops gave him an odd look.

 

“You don’t sound ok Ieh you sure sure you don’t need a break we’ve been at this for quite a long time now?”

 

“Actually ya I could use a break I felt sort of odd for a moment there excuse me Dag while I compose myself perhaps some beer might do me good.”

 

The gnome stood up awkwardly, knocked a toolbox over and staggered towards the direction of supply tents.

 

*

 

Twelve crystal golems stood in a perfect formation, four abreast and three in a row, all in same posture, all standing the exact same distance from each other. Only the small symbols and numbers painted on their steam engines were different. One of them moved softly, turned its translucent head first this and then that way. Satisfied with what it had seen, it ceased its movement, tried to stand in the same posture it had started with. And failed, slightly, very very slightly.

 

*

 

One of the human mercenaries eating at the fireplace paused in the middle of biting his bread. His eyes were empty, then he blinked and seemed normal again, but he dropped what he had been eating. When the sapper stood abruptly up and started walking towards the nearest hill, his comrades were curious and called after him, but not curious enough to move from the warmth and comfort of the fire. The young man walked in a straight line, stumbling as if unaccustomed to such short legs, finally reached the hilltop. His gaze sweeped slowly over the Steam Army’s camp, doing a perfect circle. When it was complete, he blinked again and had no idea why he was there.

 

*

 

It feels like the White Oracle. I can see the weave, the intricate web of Fate she has spun. And how I tear at it, tugging and pulling, drawing her attention no matter what I do. She might be the one in the card, it might be her loss when I emerge as whole from the shards sunk into her army. They just need the desperation to call her forth, the stupid, foolish gamble I’d never do but she might, go with a cup and thirty against an army. Time to sink myself deeper, fade away to depths even the all-seeing eye of the oracle will not see me, will not detect the venomous fangs already pumping poison into her outstretched hand …

 

… I really hate this boring watch duty, it’s not like their tiny army is going to attack us. I wonder why we haven’t brought our real strength to bear, yet. Huh!? I blinked and the sun moved so much? I must’ve fallen asleep. Good thing nobody noticed … really good thing.

 

* *

 

Dusk crept across the unhospitable stone plains. The last strands of sunlight danced on the red towers of Arkstâd, dazzled Jankiize who was still watching eastwards, towards the setting sun. They caressed the beautiful and deadly crystal golems, their wavering shadows all the same except for one. Hillsides sank into shadows, slowing down a lone sapper walking back towards his tent, confused and tired. Darkness grew deeper in a supply tent where a gnome was drinking beer, frowning as if trying to remember something. And a guard paused before leaving his post after being relieved, exchanged a few words with the next hapless soldier.

 

Sun set and it was dark.

[Zadown]

Tiny illusionary armies crept across a map on the table, paused and flickered back to their starting positions. Frowning, Jankiize crouched over the map and tried to divine a working strategy against the impossible numbers of the Steam Army. She turned towards the commander of the wyvern guard and had a dizzying sense of déjá vu, remembered when it had been the Dreamer where she was and a younger, more naïve Jankiize watching the little transparent soldiers.

 

“It looks hopeless, doesn’t it? My twenty bound warriors and what’s left of your guards, a few monks channelling the energy of the Grail against a fist of steel. We’ve dented them and they’ve crushed us, three times now.”

 

The commander had a fatalistic smile on his face and he shrugged.

 

“There’s no way to run, not in this season with the lava sea active. So, we’ll fight, hopeless or not. Once they breach to the city proper, as they certainly will this time, we’ll have the advantage if not the numbers. I apologize beforehand, but I must ask once more – can you not summon the Lord of Chaos, like you did back then in the first fight, Lady Vangaijuua?”

 

Jankiize stiffened up as she heard the question and glared at the commander. She looked like a warrior now herself, her long hair cut short, another white scar visible on her brow, armor still as perfect as it had been the day it was made but dusty, the hilt of the katana stained dark with dried sweat and blood. She walked up to the old carreer soldier with the limp she had gotten during the second attack and spent a moment looking at him, saying nothing. He took it with the stoicism of an officer, stood in attention when she spoke softly.

 

“Do you really think I would have let all those people die if I could have prevented it? That I consider this a sport of some sort, Sir Graeher, a sport that’d grow boring with the unfair advantage of having the Dreamer here?”

 

“No, Lady Vangaijuua, I do not think so.”

 

“Good. That’ll be all.”

 

Graeher gave her a curt nod, executed a perfect turn and marched out of the tower. Once she was sure he was gone she turned towards an immovable form standing in the darkest shadows of the room, hard to see even by her augmented senses.

 

“Sreacjim, think it is time to try what we spoke about?”

 

“Given the fact there will be no fifth attack, this fourth one breaking us apart and crushing us to dust, yes, perhaps.”

 

He stepped forward to the light, hidden within the depths of his robe but not shrouded by magic any more, and gestured with his gloved hands as he spoke.

 

“The guardian of the grail has given his permission if I think such an action is necessary. It would seem so. The wards have already faded, most of the original monks are gone. Some still argue this is not what the prophecy meant, and on some abstract level they might be correct, but if there are no monks and no Grail, the question becomes rather moot. Hah, we are ready for the Armageddon, yes.”

 

She allowed worry to show on her face as she sat down.

 

“Do you think it’ll work? My uncle described the way the Grail fades and vanishes if impure beings try to possess it for their own purposes. How … how pure must one be? By what standards? I have killed, among other things …”

 

“If the hands of Fate have pushed us to this point, if the lore the Dreamer had when he chose you was correct, we have nothing to worry about, girl. There are no absolutes, no raw purities or essences. You’ll do, if the Grail wills so.”

 

Jankiize stood up and examined the broken and dying illusions on the exquisite map, one of them reminding her of the cute guard, who had been with hindsight obviously smitten with her. She sighed, fingered the hilt of her katana unwittingly and nodded to the undead monk.

 

“If and if, but that’s the best we have. I’ll carry the Grail to this one, last battle if it wills so.”

 

The monk bowed to her and vanished back into the shadows.

 

* * *

 

“Troops!”

 

“Sir commander!”

 

“What? TROOPS!”

 

“SIR COMMANDER!”

 

The scarred remains of the wyvern guard saluted their commander with raised weapons and helmets, with a reckless energy. They were the last veterans left, the most lucky, the most hardy, most cunning, the best. Behind them in the open area near the docks, normally only used during the sailing season as a market place, stood the Arkstâd militia, a far less menancing group of merchants, boys at the verge of adulthood, workers and mercenaries. Next to them were the twenty remaining planar warriors, hidden by illusions and armor to resemble mere elite knights, nevertheless an aura of otherness around them. They seemed bored and relaxed, their eyes of celestial or abyssal fire burning deep inside their helmets, and nobody dared to approach them.

 

Sir Graeher stood on the same level as his men, a man of average height and build, grey hair and brown eyes. His red and black uniform was impeccably neat and he had an air of authority despite his mediocre physical traits, and his voice had steel in it, unyielding strength. Beside him was Jankiize, ‘the Bronze Lady’, clad in her armour without a tabard, her katana hanging in a sheath from her belt. She was short, seemed even less like a military commander than Graeher did, but the past months had trimmed her softness away, or made it private. Her uncertainity had vanished as well, sunk deeper and been forgotten there – the examples of the Dreamer and what her own guard had told her about how one of her birth rank should act coming to fore. She had been in the front line during the second defense of Arkstâd, walked out of a smashed, detonated building with an injured leg, the blood of the nearby soldiers on her armor and a haunted look on her eyes. That had not stopped her from being in the front line again during the third defense, where she got a glancing blow from a crystal golem to her brow, gaining her a scar. Even with her lame leg and new scar, shorn hair and simple martial attire she was beautiful … and very young, still.

 

“Well, troops. The Steam Army is on the move again and will be here tomorrow, as you know. This is the fourth defense of Arkstâd, and that is exactly what we will do. We will defend our city, and we will defend it for us, not for Chaos or not against Law, but because it is our city. Who cares what ideologies the attackers follow, eh?”

 

“WE DON’T!”

 

“That’s right, troops, we don’t. We’ll just send them packing, with coffins and broken machines, like we’ve done three times so far. Alright, you know I don’t like to make long speeches and you don’t want to hear them, so scram! Officers!”

 

“Sir Commander!”

 

“Follow me.”

 

Graeher turned to leave, and Jankiize and a small group of wyvern guard officers followed him to the nearby empty tavern converted to defense headquarters. The guards and the militia moved towards the remains of the city wall, the barracks or their homes, the guards in order and the militia slowly and in disarray. The remaning twenty planar soldiers watched them go, standing soon alone in the empty plaza.

[Zadown]

The raising sun dragged itself ponderously over the horizont and started to burn away the mists of the night. Its light glinted on the loudly growling steam-tanks, refracted into millions of colors by passing through the crystal golems, brought the colourful uniforms of the Steam Army alive. The sunlight easily outraced the clumsy army and ran over the empty, cratered land before the old city gates, leaped over the broken and torn wall, paused atop the scarred red towers and plunged then deeper into Arkstâd, revealing old signs of bombardment wherever it touched the buildings and the streets. All over the old scars of the war were the new crude fortifications, craters that had been dug deeper and were used as trenches, huge sharp stones pointed towards the advancing enemy. Movement flickered in the defensive lines, marking the guards and militia hurrying to their positions. They were tired and scared, silent and moody, grim and determined – and they all knew there was nowhere to run. Some rare few carried enchanted steel spikes to jam the tracks of the massive warmachines with, some brave and strong ones had long mallets hexed to break crystal and metal. Most of those bleak men carried their weapons because the previous owner, or more often owners, had been killed. A light enchantment, vast in scope but shallow, was laid over the crossbow bolts to make them aim true and penetrate deep.

 

Against a traditional enemy this wealth of magic would have made the troops overconfident, boisterous. Against the rolling, inexorable warmachines they had now seen thrice in action they knew it would not be enough. Over the defenders lay a deadly calm, an unspoken agreement of selling Arkstâd so dearly they would be remembered, in some song or story at least.

 

“Enemy o’hoy!”

 

The voice was young but carried in the cool morning air. Far away appeared the tell-tale sign of the Steam Army, a white cloud hanging close to the ground: the exhaust of a hundred machines of war. Graeher, Jankiize and Sreacjim watched the cloud from near the middle of the second line of the defense. They stood on a balcony that had miraculously survived the three previous battles and now hung two stories above the cratered ground. The first line of defense was a line of skirmishers, hidden crossbow marksmen and one of the few remaining monks. This second line would be where the real fighting would start, where they would start painting the streets red with both their and the enemy’s blood. They had adopted to this new style of fighting quickly and well – there were no warriors clearly in sight.

 

Jankiize felt anxious and tense. She had not learnt the tricks of the Void yet, was as stranded here as everybody else. Her belief in the Dreamer’s intervention had vaxed and waned, was now almost gone as a shadowy daydream. Second and third battles had been fierce and bloody, and he had not showed up. This time would be no different, except she’d die here and nobody would ever bring her parents back. Through her dismal thoughts she slowly sensed something coming closer, some warm and friendly presence of great power. Jankiize half-turned to see, but was startled to feel a leather-gloved hand on her shoulder. Sreacjim gave her a sideways glance, shook his head a fraction and turned to keep his vigil.

 

Ah! They are bringing the Grail.

 

She forced herself to watch as the white cloud approached, looking so innocent. The warm glow behind her grew as it got closer, made her smile despite everything. Graeher sounded faintly amused as he spoke.

 

“I’m glad you find something entertaining in this fight, Lady Vangaijuua. Your serenity gives our warriors strength.”

 

“Ah, no, it isn’t the fight. I … just remembered something, a good memory.”

 

She noticed the same warmth seemed to melt some of Graeher’s icy steelness away, even if the commander did not directly sense the approaching power. As the old officer looked at her and smiled, more with his eyes than with his mouth, Jankiize was abruptly reminded of the Dreamer, of the way he had smiled at her.

 

Perhaps he will be here after all. We did win those two battles without him, didn’t we? And since we will not win this one without him, he’ll be here … ah, childish fancies. Better be ready for the worst.

 

She shook the warm and soft feeling away, took a deep breath and steeled herself for the ruthless combat ahead. Jankiize muttered a few words, not proficient enough to see the lines of magic without a spell. Their side looked like it should – dim glows of enchanted weapons, the result of hers and the monks’ work, showing through stone and wood, the few last monks shining with muted power, Grail burning like golden sun behind them, being carried closer. She herself was bathed in bright flames, the wards in her amulet, protective enchantments in her armour and spells of ice and keen edge on Winter’s Touch shining with the brilliance of planewalker magic. The girl turned her gaze towards the approaching army, expecting to see only the blurred embers marking the crystal golems. Instead, a dazzling supernova in front of the army made her stagger violently backwards. She hit her head on the stone wall and fell down to sitting position, holding her head before Graeher had time to help her.

 

“Ow!”

 

“What was it, Lady? Was that some sort of attack against you?”

 

“Ow … no, no.”

 

Jankiize stood up clumsily and allowed the commander to help her, blinking to get rid of the afterimages.

 

“It’s just … I think they have a planewalker leading them. A … Lady of Order, you would say. I got almost blinded by her aura.”

 

“So, she is a being as powerful as the Dreamer?”

 

The girl smiled grimly and dusted off her armour, still almost blind. She squinted at the commander, trying to see him through the pulsing lights in her vision.

 

“No, not as powerful. The Dreamer said … what was it, now. Ah, he said that the gladiators of the Void do not create armies to hide behind. The problem is that the Dreamer you saw during the first defense was one trying to hide his presence, used his powers only sparingly. So, she might be able to do more than he did.”

 

Graeher closed his eyes for a short moment. When he opened them again he looked resigned.

 

“Then we are truly lost. Her warmachines would be enough but against a being of such power, what tools we have left?”

 

“The Grail.”

 

Sreacjim’s whisper was the first thing he had said in a while. Jankiize nodded to the monk, trying to look confident in front of the commander. Graeher looked questioningly at both of them, then gave a short, dry laugh.

 

“I see. I wasn’t trustworthy or wise enough to be included in that council? I thought the monks would keep it inside their mountain, would use it to power their spells until the last one of you fell. Already it has saved us, but at what costs … so, why was it not removed from its vault earlier? Why go through all this…”, Graeher gestured, pointing at the craters, at the shattered walls, at the places where so many had died, at the missing monks, “… if we had the power to truly oppose them?”

 

The monk’s dry voice drifted out of the depths of the hood, dead words with no remorse.

 

“We did not trust her. She is here to take the Grail away, to carry the fickle thing for her Lord of Chaos. And the eldest of the monks did not agree, said the prophecy has not been fulfilled. Now they are gone and she still remains, and there are no other options. We are not guardians of the people of Arkstâd. We are here to guard the Grail.”

 

Sreacjim shrugged and fell silent. In the silence she could hear three sets of footsteps coming up the stairs. First thing she saw coming up the stairs were two warriors, both wearing mismatched and obviously several times repaired plate, a selection of weapons hanging from their belts and on their back. Their eyes were shadowed by their full helmets. but she could feel their gaze on her. They were wearing no tabard, but they had small bronze badges with engraved picture of a goblet. The monk nodded to the two warriors, acknowledging their presence. One of them nodded back, then they moved aside to fade into the shadows near the corners of the balcony.

 

Behind them came an ancient monk, bent with age, carrying an engraved stone chest full of faded symbolic pictures that were hard to see. Jankiize could feel the power pulsing inside the chest, the familiar taint of the Chaos strong in it. It reminded her again of the Dreamer, a memory she threw away to concentrate on the present. Sreacjim smiled, his white teeth showing even in the shadows of his cowl, and his dry, raspy voice had a triumphant note to it.

 

“Behold – the Holy Grail.”

[Zadown]

The world held its breath. In the still moment, despite the long road that had brought her here just for this she hesistated, looked around to find the wise and deep eyes of the Dreamer that’d tell her what to do. He did not appear, but Sreacjim nodded in his stead, released her from her indecision. Slowly, she walked to the chest. This close the warmth was almost uncomfortable, a pulsing heat that sent a chill through her. As she stepped forward, the old monk muttered words of unlocking while touching different spots of the chest, clearly unlocking it. Despite his great age, his motions were swift and sure as he had done this a thousand times. Still, when the chest opened and the golden glow of the Holy Grail flooded the balcony, almost like liquid transparent fire, he was startled and the chest swayed in his hands. The place lit up with the light: it climbed up the armor the warriors wore, made radiant angels out of them both; it caressed Jankiize, turning her into a lady made of the fiery matter of stars; and it expelled all the last shadows of the dying night, flooded the balcony with light more pervasive than any sunlight. She could feel the raw, undiluted chaos of it and she shivered involuntarily. The girl barely heard what Sreacjim said.

 

“We, the Brotherhood of Armageddon, entrust you this, our burden. Wield it to save us and to save the world.”

 

Jankiize nodded, enraptured by the Grail, and reached towards the glowing chalice. It was warm and soft under her fingertips, like living gold. She had expected the bolt of power it sent through her and did not sway, was surprised how gentle the contact was. The Grail whispered to her even when it had the strength to shout, dimmed to not to blind her. She laughed aloud and raised the artefact high for all the troops to see, and it blazed again as a golden sun, as the challenge of Chaos to the approaching army of Law, dancing and fickle light drowning the harsh, monochrome glare of the Lady of Order. Arkstâdians saw the golden fire and cheered in their pits and trenches, broken houses and small hiding places, the volume of the yells raining plaster and sand on them.

 

“The Grail! Lady Bronze! The Grail for Arkstâd!”

 

Now, how exactly am I supposed to use this?

 

Euphoria faded and reality asserted itself, whispered to Jankiize about the approaching army and the planewalker leading it. She could see the steam-tanks, crystal golems and mercenary sappers now, the long noses of the Law’s artillery ponderously turning to point towards Arkstâd and the bright glow of the White Oracle. The power of raw chaos throbbed under her fingertips, but she lacked the skills to shape it, the vision to grasp one of the myriads of possibilities it offered her. That realization hit her badly and made her smile falter as she had swallowed something bitter. The golden, concealing light of the Grail masked her face, but Graeher saw through it and whispered in a loud voice.

 

“Everything alright, Lady Vangaijuua? You do not look well.”

 

“We’d need an immortal to hold this power – I know magic, but I’ve studied the Art less than ten years compared to the three thousand years of lore the Dreamer has. We thought it’d be easier to use…”

 

Her voice faded as she sought to attune herself with the artefact, understanding the sheer amount of its complexity by every passing moment. Some limited parts of its power were obvious, but they all hinted at deeper functions and meanings, were like childish sketches scrawled over the pages of a single book of a great library. The benign softness of the Grail was a mere faulty first impression. Under that, deeper in the vast rivers of mana flowing in the core of the chalice the powers were elementary, primal in their nature, and Jankiize gritted her teeth as she felt them tugging at her spirit ready to crush her if she overextended herself. She stood at the brink of a great chasm and looked down at the cosmic forces swirling underneath her, all sense of time lost. Somebody shook her, tugged her back towards the useless material thing she had left behind, and that barely gave her the focus she needed to return feeling partly annoyed and party relieved. Sweat darkened Jankiize’s hair and stung her eyes when she managed to regain the control of her body. Sun had moved in the sky, and the Steam Army was close now. She felt weak and exhausted, the power of the Grail draining her instead of sustaining her, and gave a grateful smile to Graeher as he helped her to a chair that had been brought up.

 

“Has anything happened while … I was gone?”

 

“No, but now something is happening. Their Lady of Order is coming this way with only a small honor guard.”

 

Jankiize gave a resigned sigh and rose up from the very comfortable chair to see over the rail. A small squad of archangels disguised as knights escorted a lone woman in billowing white robes. She could sense her aura of power and the pervasive taint of Law it brought with it, but had trouble estimating her true might. The Dreamer tended to hide his strength most of the time, perfecting his skills in subterfuge but also robbing her of a point of reference. When she got closer, Jankiize saw her robes, which had seemed white, were not so, and when she moved they shimmered and changed hue so the eye was bewildered. She could feel the enchantments woven in the robes try to confuse and intimidate her, but she kept her mind clear by concentrating. As she broke the effect of the befuddling charm, she saw the Lady of Order turn her head upward sharply and stare at her. The planewalker was beautiful in an ethereal way, with no visible scars. It was hard to focus to her face, which seemed to shimmer and change along with her robes, but there was an impression of a cold, calculating smile.

 

“Mornin’, m’lady Van’aijuua. ‘Tis a too fine day to ruin ‘t by unnecessary strife, ya?”

 

“Morning, the White Oracle. Arkstâd brings no strife here – they have lived here in peace and would still live here in peace, if your army had not invaded this plane.”

 

“They can remain ‘ere in peace, if ye give me that pretty bauble ye are holdin’, m’lady. These bindin’ words I, Jannael Baladargian, speak o’ my own free will.”

 

Jankiize paled at the words. Sreacjim, free of the debilitating effects of the aura of confusion as an undead, gave her a warning look.

 

She really means it! Those are the real binding words of a planewalker’s pact, not to be broken lightly if ever. If I keep it we lose and she takes it by force unless it fades again, if I give it to her she’ll use it against Chaos.

 

Don’t worry, Jankiize. I’m here as I promised.

 

Uncle Dreamer!?

 

From the main body of the army a lone crystal golem had detached itself without anybody noticing and addressed the planewalker now with a tinkling, grinding voice. Everybody turned their attention to it, the confusion and fear on their minds lessening as the focus of their senses shifted.

 

“’Tis not for ye, Lady of Bones. Ye should’ve kept yer thin cadaver hidden, m’lady – yer too lightweight for this game.”

 

The White Oracle howled in anger, angular shapes manifesting themselves over her gesturing form, blinding light twisting into a globe of protection around her. The golem fell forward, a misty apparition appearing next to it at the very same moment the planewalker released her anger. The crystal construct blew apart in a shower of sparks and jagged shards of deadly glass, the shockwave passing through the ghost without harming it. Behind it, in the Steam Army, a human sapper shuddered and stumbled to his knees, a gnome engineer fell from the steam tractor he had been riding and a guard shuddered in place, growling incomprehensible words. With every convulsing soldier the ghost turned less transparent, more real. Its grin was now visible, and the scars dancing over its pale face, the grey hair and black iron crown.

 

Quick, Li’tl’ Princess, act as my conduct and let me tap the power of the Grail. Please?

 

Wait, how … ah. Yes.

 

A thin golden line crept across the sky from Jankiize to the still coalescing Dreamer. When it was finished, it flashed as a golden lightning, the thunderous boom of the power transfer making people’s ears ring. She could feel the huge drain the Dreamer exacted from the Grail and she realized how fragile the planewalker was right now, still weak from his scattering. Another thunderous boom rocked the surroundings. The White Oracle had sent a searing bolt of white fire at the Dreamer, who had easily deflected it with a roaring, rotating shield of golden flames. He smirked and gathered the shield to a tiny ball which he tossed at his opponent. She shrieked and raised a half-globe of crystal to protect her before vanishing into a golden explosion. What emerged when the flames died down was a desiccated, rotten lich in white robes, pale energies gathering around her fists. Both armies had seen it all, and reacted now with a muted roar. Arkstâdians turned their surprise into cheers, Steam Army into cries of dismay. Over the din the White Oracle’s icy voice could be heard, augmented by magic.

 

“Ye think ye’ve won, Scourge o’ th’ Planes, but ye still have no army to back ye up. I withdraw my pact – I’ll buy th’ Grail from ya with blood instead.”

 

The Dreamer answered by laughing loudly as he drew Pain, Owiric’s demon soldiers rushing through portals winking into existence to join the fray.

[Zadown]

Earth shook, whether from the force of the shells or from some escaped battlemagic, it was impossible to determine. The Dreamer and his tiny company had vanished into the demoralized but huge Steam Army, golden fire and harsh white glow duelling against each other somewhere in the depths of smoke and dust. Arkstâdians stood by, watching the powerful forces clash together with a mixture of awe and fear. They did not want to venture out of their defense lines to the open killing field, and nobody blamed them.

 

Jankiize could feel the constant drain the Dreamer exacted on the Grail through her and was in turn taxed by the work. She felt like a huge hand was crushing her slowly while somebody else was pulling a hot wire through her head, trembled and sweated and had trouble breathing as the fires of creation flowed through her, energies the immortals smote each other with.

 

What you need all this for? You are hurting me, uncle.

 

Sshh, m’lady – weather this storm and I will shut down the channel soon.

 

She sent her grudging acquiescence through the wavering mental channel they had, shuddered as the Dreamer pulled another great stream of glowing flames through her, from the Grail. The pain heightened and made her fall to her knees and gasp, the cup still in her white fingers but it too dimming, its seemingly unlimited energies being voraciously devoured by some conjuring, some feat of magic profound and megalomanic. Graeher helped her to the chair but with a distracted air, watching over the rail, to the same direction Sreacjim was staring at. Jankiize resisted the urge to curl up or sever the link between the planewalker and the artefact. Instead she tugged feebly at the commander’s arm and whispered hoarsely.

 

“What is it? What is he doing?”

 

“There is a clear area amidst the battle, it must be something he wants to show us. Hard to see from here, but he seems to have something in his hand.”

 

“Listen *cough* listen, he is draining enough magic to destroy everything within miles. What is he doing!?”

 

“He flung what he had up, look.”

 

Graeher pointed and Jankiize squinted to see the little black dot against the sky. It slowly flew higher in a straight line that seemed to defy gravity, then its trajectory curved in an unnatural manner, as if it had been drawing a circle. The dot swung through the empty air towards the balcony and she saw it was a dagger cutting the sky, its hilt toward an unexisting central point. Behind it flickered faint shapes that focused to other daggers, all drawing the same big, slanted circle, all slowly cutting the air. It was a crown of daggers, beautiful in its weirdness. The circle swung away from them, shrunk and grew complete, a whirling halo of sharp blades. Wearily Jankiize stood up, slowly aware that her work as a conduct was mostly done. Some enchantment of the Dreamer had cleared the smoke and the dust and revealed how the battle had slowed down to witness this birth or rebirth or conjuring. The halo of daggers spun in an ever-tightening orbit over a slender shape next to the Dreamer, opposite to the White Oracle. The shape was like a glass woman filled with the golden essence of the primal forces of the Grail, the mighty artefact creating a body out of nothingness. As her crown of daggers descended to spin protectively over her head, her crude form refined itself, the roiling energies inside her changing from raw potential to solid fact. The Maiden of Daggers breathed her first breath the first time in ages, smiled as her golden lips turned red.

 

A merest thought was enough to make the Grail sharpen her eyesight, that much knowledge she had wrestled from it. Jankiize paled as she saw the Maiden more clearly – the now fully formed, naked woman radiated viciousness and bloodlust. Despite her appearance, there was nothing human in her. She was an elemental force of killing, a manifestation of grace, agility and death. The newborn Maiden extended her hands in a twisted gesture of benediction, conjured two long daggers out of thin air and ran forward, leaping and spinning, a dervish. Jankiize saw how the Dreamer watched his conjuring with wariness, even fear, and how another crown of daggers appeared above the battlefield, then a third, both vast halos circling far above ground. She saw how the Maiden’s own small circle of daggers sliced apart the White Oracle’s guards and wards, how the two blades she wielded slashed archangels apart. The Maiden of Daggers wore only a coat of blood and a terrible smile when she cut the White Oracle apart like the planewalker had been a rag doll.

 

* * *

 

“So?”

 

“Ya, m’lady Jankiize?”

 

”What now?”

 

The tower felt empty around them, most of the Dreamer’s guard dead. The Dreamer sat at his table, had been gazing the map and the fading illusionary soldiers. Jankiize stood and paced around despite her bone-deep weariness, felt too shaken by the events to be still. The Grail shimmered weakly on a small table behind her – but even blind, or in the dark or miles away from it she could’ve told now which way it was. It was connected to her, the link burned to her mind with the golden fire the cup was full of.

 

“Now we’ll turn th’ Eternal War around, raise th’ Grail as th’ standard for th’ Chaos an’ rally those who are true to th’ cause behind it. Th’ powers it has are only half th’ point, really. ‘Tis a standard forces withdrawn from th’ war or uninterest’d in it will follow.”

 

“And when will you do what you promised? Raise my parents?”

 

“When we have no need for th’ Grail any more, when th’ forces of Law ‘ave been broken, when we lose th’ Grail or when ten years have passed.”

 

“Ten years!”

 

“Ya, ‘tis may be ‘ard to turn th’ tables aroun’ in such a short time, but ye mortals are such a hasty people I thought ye might balk at fifty years.”

 

“I’m twenty-five in ten years! Almost as old as my parents!”

 

“Ya?”

 

The Dreamer seemed puzzled. His eyes changed between green and blue as he regarded the angry but tired Jankiize.

 

“Five! Or I’ll cut the link and set the Grail free, send it adrift again.”

 

The planewalker tensed at the words, his face turning hard and morose, the scars dancing around in a threatening way. As his eyes darkened swiftly, going from blue to purple to almost black, half-formed shapes swirled around him to show he truly was angry.

 

“After all I’ve done, ye want to undermine my work an’ cut th’ counterattack short? Ye really want to live in a multiverse controll’d by th’ Law that much? Ye want another Steam Army crushin’ th’ Tree o’ Life?”

 

“Live in a multiverse controlled by the Law? I’d rather just live, uncle! And this isn’t it! I’m sure following the forces of the Chaos on their campaign will be even worse, at least here in Arkstâd I got to meet other mortals. You want me to spend ten of my best years running along with some overglorified demon stampede and BE GRATEFUL!?”

 

Jankiize shouted the last words at the top of her voice, golden embers wheeling around her to match the shadows flickering around the Dreamer. They both scowled at each other, too angry for more words, when the planewalker’s eyes lightened up without warning, went from black to light grey.

 

“Five years, then. So be it.”

[Zadown]

Epilogue

 

The tavern was smoky, people burning herbs in small coal braziers and inhaling the intoxicating fumes. Some were drinking more traditional poisons, some eating in the more silent corners of the room. Near the fireplace the place was loud, people banging their flagons on the tables, singing loudly and generally making a racket. There were almost no women present: the landlord was a thin, one-armed man wearing a hood that concealed his face, the servants odd, graceful constructs made of long, polished sticks, their metal hands handling braziers, flagons and plates with sorcerous nimbleness. The people drinking were all fighting men, their swords and axes and vleoras and spiked maces hanging from their belts, lying on the tables next to their meals or leaning to the wall, near if need be. In the corners some of the people eating were of a more civilian nature, a few swathed in clothes and possibly female.

 

At a table by the bar sat an officer, his plumed helmet on the table, his young face showing signs of drunken merriment mixed with cruelty, the face of a mercenary captain on a short leave. His table was full of the most boisterous and loud of his crew, the sergeants of his unit. The officer slammed his flagon down, eyed his band.

 

“So, how does it feel to be on the winning side, on the Grail’s side, lads? Beer taste any better now?”

 

“Beer’s fine, Capt’n, but the table’s still lackin’. Where’s our winner’s spoils, eh? Where’s the admiring womanfolk?”

 

“Haha, with that scar on your face, Split, you’ll need to find womanfolk’s who have already drunk twice the beer ye’ve had today!”

 

“I’m not split where it counts, my boy. I’d show ya but my back can’t handle liftin’ such heavy weights at this hour, see.”

 

“Speakin’ of womanfolk, Capt’n, there’s one now, an’ a fine one too.”

 

They all turned, the captain and his four sergeants. The door had just opened and they could see the shimmering planar wall far beyond, the dark shadows of sharp rocks and dead trees showing as black against dark blue in the eternal night. They did not care about the view, though. What they saw was a young woman in bronze scalemail and her two companions, nondescript men in grey and brown, so mundane they were forgotten the second their eyes slid back to the girl. She had uneven, short blond hair, symmetrical, oval face with two thin scars and a determined look. Her body was slim, the armor she wore making it slightly more bulky. The girl let her eyes quickly sweep across the room, her mouth twisting in distaste, before she marched towards the bar and the landlord.

 

“Watch out Capt’n, if she’s a planewalker she’ll steal yer family jewels, ha!”

 

“The abyss she will, planewalker’s don’t come here an’ they are different, their eyes all inhuman an’ shit. This one’s a mortal, an’ she’ll warm my bed tonight.”

 

“Let’s see yer smooth, officering ways, then. Hahaha!”

 

The sergeants laughed raucously, toasting in advance for their officer’s new exploits. The girl ignored their looks, stopped right next to them to talk to the landlord. Just as she was handing something to the sour man, the captain leaned backwards and grabbed her, hoisting her to his lap in one swift motion. He had time to smile lecherously before he felt the sharp steel under his chin. At the same moment he had that sobering experience, the world around him twisted and stretched in nauseating ways, the smells of brimstone and ash floating in the air. Something lifted him up by the arm and he growled aloud with surprise, barked in pain as one of his bones snapped. One of the two mundane men that had followed the girl was now a towering demon above him, bright sparks floating up from its nostrils every time it exhaled, huge yellow eyes made of fire staring at him. In the normality where he had just been pulled from, his sergeants kept on drinking and laughing, not noticing what had just happened to their captain three feet away from them.

 

“Shall I kill him, Mistress?”

 

Jankiize stared upwards at the frightened, pale face of the captain, made ugly by the mixture of pain and fear shining through, saw how his trousers had a growing stain. She sighed, wearily, and made a little gesture with her empty right hand while she sheathed her knife.

 

“No, leave the miserable little man be, Angrôthin. He’ll be good, now.”

 

The demon growled but let the captain go. He fell back to his chair and curled over his broken arm. Normality flowed over the incident, returned him to the same table as his sergeants, who could not understand how their manly captain had suddenly grown sickly pale. Jankiize ignored the commotion behind her, paid for the large packet of food the landlord gave her and turned to leave. Angrôthin stepped closer and whispered to her with his growling, fiery voice that only the girl could hear.

 

“You are too merciful, Mistress. One day a snake you release back to the wild will return and bite you.”

 

“I’m still human, demon. That’s all.”

[Zadown]

The Lost Paths were on fire.

 

Glowing red tendrils snaked through them, lead by bright pinpoints of power, planewalker captains and archdukes of various hells and abysmal planes, followed by their dogs of war. Some of the huge armies carried massive flags, the new symbol of the Chaos army blazing with brilliant colors against the darkness of the Void: the Holy Grail surrounded by the eight arrows of different lenghts, all of them pointing to different directions. And in the corner of the flag, almost impossible to see from this far, a small mage sigil - the Dreamer's mark, a burning flame in a broken triangle of Law from which two of the eight arrows of Chaos flee.

 

It looks like the empty veins of the dead Void are pumped full of blood. And blood there shall be, rivers of it.

 

It is time for the Eternal War to end.