"I hope not," said Merrin with the faintest touch of a smile. "If so I'd be the most ineffectual dragonrider ever to be called Renegade." She absently wound a strand of hair, tinted auburn by the firelight, around her fingers. Admittedly, she'd never faced a battle without feeling the hollowness of fear inside her, a void of horrible uncertainty. After their latest misadventures she would almost have thought she'd been through enough for it to subside - but evidently not. "I always wondered how the Meiltha did it," she said softly, looking at the coals. "They never seemed afraid of anything."

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Kendath's lips quickly turned upward in a smirk at that. "Not afraid? We are - they are afraid of anything and everything. Death is perhaps the only one that does not top their list, perhaps because they have nothing to live for." He seemed about to say more, but fell silent for lack of expression.

He was two bites into tackling his wonderful rabbit when a chill wind picked up, swirling around the mountain peaks and hissing into their alcove. The already weak flames in their campfire flickered before being consumed by the deathly chill and going out completely.

Deathly...

"Damnation," Kendath swore, rising to his feet and reaching for his falchion. He ducked out of the alcove into a seemingly transformed land where nonexistent clouds blotted out the emerging stars. The cold permeated his limbs and congealed his blood. Curses, he'd thought they were gone! He'd thought - !

Gyre was stirring, emerald eyes wide in alarm. "We have to get - "

An inhuman plaint split the air, echoing hollowly off the mountainsides.

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Merrin scrambled to her feet, rapier half-unsheathed. It glinted dully in the now nonexistant light. Wyvern uncurled from his position with a snort of alarm.

The cold penetrated through her thin cloak, permeating every bone in Merrin's body. The freezing wind blew her hair blew in thin tendrils back from her face, which grew paler by the second. Deathly voices on the air -

"We have to go!" she cried after a moment of petrified fear, fumbling with the straps of Wyvern's flight saddle. "They're coming!"

Perhaps it was the realization that they were after her, that her death - or worse - was the desire of their eerie cries, that made Merrin suddenly so terrified. No matter the reason, when she turned to scan the sky her expression was one of wide-eyed horror.

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Right. Three rabbits.

------

Adanil shivered in the cold mountain air--the lowlands had never had weather this cold. The fire helped, though. It was warm enough that he could almost forget about the cold that bit at his back while the flames licked almost at his boots. He glanced at the rabbits cooking on their respective spits over the fire, and winced. While his own rabbit was roasting well enough, both Kendath's and Merrin's were a rather sickly black color.

Of course, with the darkness closing in around them, and the chill in the air seeming to grow greater, the Dragonriders chose to talk about fear. He had spent his fair share of nights alone in a dark forest, but this night was....different. He pulled his cloak closer around himself and gave the Dragonriders a baleful glare.

The fire, dying all too soon, chose that moment to extinguish itself completely. As the darkness closed in around them, Kendath swore and grabbed his falchion. A cry pierced the silent night, one that froze Adanil's blood in his veins. They were being hunted.

The Dragonriders, both with their weapons drawn, went to mount Gyre and Wyvern, for some reason. Adanil's scimitar was out, too, but he did not see a reason to leave. If they stayed, he might have a chance for revenge, after all.

"Where are you going? Aren't you going to face them?" he asked, his expression one of confusion and anger. This was his chance to avenge his village, and the Dragonriders were fleeing?

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"How?" demanded Merrin, numb fingers still fumbling with the loosened straps of Wyvern's saddle. "They are undead - we cannot kill them! Your village is dead, but their demise will not be made nobler by yours."

Again that keening wail pierced the night and Merrin sheathed her rapier and made to mount Wyvern. After an instant of hesitation she turned to look fully at Adanil. "Words cannot express my sorrow at your loss. Come with us now - there are better ways to have vengeance."

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Kendath swung himself onto the flight saddle and flicked a purely wrathful glare on Adanil. Now was not the time to fool with this. With thoughts similar to his, Gyre snatched him up by the collar and flung him unceremoniously onto the saddle behind Kendath.

They were, regrettably, too late.

A telltale hiss through the air, and Kendath ducked just as a bone arrow whistled an inch above his head to thud into the tree behind him. The sapling's bark instantly froze, ramifications of ice spreading outwards from the arrow's embedded point. Gyre roared and spread her wings.

And that was when they appeared. Legions of undead, revived from the netherplane. Tattered skeletal forms swaying in the howling wind, they surrounded them with low moans of despair. Winged wraiths wheeled and shrieked in the darkened skies above them.

"Hail, Mistress Merrin Dragonrider," came a sibilant voice, carrying japingly over the wind. The undead ranks parted to reveal a hooded figure in their midst, very much alive. His black robes adorned with crimson runes swished over the snow as he strode forth.

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Merrin froze where she stood beside Wyvern, about to mount. She was nearly as pale as the corpse-white spirits that filled the freezing air above them. But her voice did not tremble when she said in reply, "Who are you to call me so?"

Wyvern snarled, snaking his neck down around her while shrieks once more filled the air above them. "You cannot prevail with spirits of those dead!" Merrin cried, knuckles white where she clutched the straps of the saddle. "Not while the power of the gods remains in me!"

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The man's only response was a chuckle conceived directly from the bowels of oblivion. The voluminous sleeves of his black robes billowing in the wind, he raised a hand, palm facing outwards. Harsh syllables of power escaped his throat, and a cone of void funneled from his palm to strike Merrin directly in the chest. She stiffened in the saddle, then spasmed as waves of icy cold surged through her body.

Growling, Kendath impulsively whipped out his sword and slid from the saddle, his strides taking him directly towards the archmage. The necromancer's mere act of stabbing a finger in his direction sent him off his feet, spinning through the air to land painfully in the snow right where he started. He slammed his fist on the ground, groaning through the explosion of ice and crimson in his mind.

"The power of the gods?" Shadower Lord Kvanoes intoned, raising his arms. In response, the undead raised an exultant paean that split the frigid air like knives. "The gods do not reign supreme. But Death is ubiquitous."

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"The gods reign even over death!" Merrin slid earthwards, trembling now from the cold - the very blood in her veins now seemed turned to ice. She thrust out a palm and white lightning crackled, lashing out at the dark-robed necromancer. She helped Kendath to his feet, arm still outstretched, and advanced slowly.

"Do not tell me what the gods do and do not control," she almost snarled. "They reign supreme!" Increasing now, blazing white pierced the night and cold. Merrin shone as if from some inner purity, a lone figure standing poised to drive back the very snares of death.

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Adanil gaped. There wasn't much else for him to do--the Undead were giving way before her. No expressions would ever cross their frozen features, and perhaps no emotion would ever be felt in their heads, but the black-robed figure looked very uncertain.

Giving Gyre a cautious glance, Adanil half-jumped, half-fell out of the saddle, his scimitar drawn, and hurried over to stand by the Dragonriders. He didn't have a clue who the black-robed figure was except that he seemed responsible for the Undead. That alone marked him out to die, if Adanil could do anything.

The necromancer was indeed stepping backwards, now, but in front of him, a dark shield of nothing seemed to absorb the lightning that Merrin cast. The expression on the man's face, though, showed how much of an effort it was. Then he looked at Adanil.

Adanil shivered as the cold, hate-filled eyes of the necromancer met his own, and shivered again when the black-robed figure raised its hand again, and once more uttered harsh-sounding words that nonetheless seemed to exude power. Feeling his limbs lock up, Adanil started to keel over, but just as swiftly, his limbs were loosened again. He cast a hate-filled glance of his own at the necromancer, who once again had his full and undivided attention on Merrin. What had just happened? At the same time his limbs had locked up, he had felt a wave of incredible cold wash through his body, but it was gone as soon as the unresponsiveness of his limbs.

At least he was no longer the target of that horrible stare. Merrin and Kendath seemed much more able to withstand it than he himself had been. They were still advancing towards the Necromancer, the moving shadow that seemed to absorb what little light there was. Adanil noticed something else--as the black-robed figure stepped back, so too did the Undead. They were linked with their master--maybe if he died, they too would be dissipated back into their graves.

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(You do realise the problem? How long ago did this catalysmic even take place from our characters present? Cause I am afraid that at that time Garthag wasn`t even alive or even Kalma)

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Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

[two thousand years. depends on how old Kalma is. if not, we can kill Kalma's ancestor.]

Keeping the blazing white at bay was indeed taxing the Shadower Lord's strength. He'd underestimated the power of the gods inside this outwardly ingenuous chit, and he'd now pay the price. The divine purity sapped at his dark soul, draining its essence even as the pain of retaining his hold on the undead fed it.

Both dragons lashed forth in concert, fire spewing from their respective mouths and sending the undead's front ranks backpedaling. Kvanoes' robed form seemed to reel and fold before their very eyes...

Suddenly dark power rippled through the mountains, exploding towards his sole figure in a surge of excruciating cold. Drawing his strength from sources no mortal could ever comprehend, the Shadower Lord Kvanoes stabbed both hands out on either side of him, palms facing outwards as if to push the waves of power away. His voice, raised in chant, bellowed across the rifts of space and oblivion.

Kendath knew a moment of blinding blackness, another moment of terrible agony as he felt the very fibers of his being torn apart... and then he knew nothing.

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Cold stone beneath his face. A venal breath on his cheek. Plaintive imprecations of the dead whispering around him...

Kendath's eyes flared open to what, upon first sight, looked to be a starless limbo. Second inspection refuted that notion - not starless limbo, but a cavern lit by uncanny crimson flames reminiscent of blood. The lambent scarlet light fell upon a dozen black-robed figures drifting about the space. Five were in a corner, reciting an incantation over a pentagram. Others leaned against the wall in quiet study or moved about to quietly converse.

He found upon immediate observation that, for him, moving was not a liberty he enjoyed at that moment. He was leaning against the cavern's far wall, opposite the single tunnel leading in. Shimmering greenish coils bound his ankles and wrists. A few feet away, Adanil suffered the same fate. And Merrin... her currently inert frame hung suspended in the air in the cavern's center, bound from chest to toes. Globes of darkness danced from the force field surrounding her. The darkness curled about her, embracing her her limp form as if to suppress the divine guidance within her. By the deathly pallor of her face, it seemed to be working.

Kendath could not repress a shiver as something icy and insubstantial brushed past his head. The fear these Shadowers invoked - the fear of death - was overpowering.

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Never had Merrin known such a nightmare as this one. Before darkness engulfed her she was aware of falling, as if into bottomless blackness, alone in a gulf of blinding pain...she remembered crying out to the gods, and then a sensation of her very essence tearing.

Now specters plagued her restless dreams where she was bound, helpless in the grip of everything she'd sworn to defeat. Of course she was unaware of the bonds about her form, the death that threatened, but evil permeated even her very dreams.

A cry escaped her lips, a plea for aid even while she remained unconscious. The darkness swelled as if to suppress even this.

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Death can be infectious. It can pervade the flesh, congeal the veins, freeze the marrow. Pain seemed to be the only tangible aspect of Kendath's universe as the Shadower's hauled him to his feet. Fingernails digging into his frozen palm, drawing thin trickles of blood. Slumping over as the greenish coils on his ankles tightened. Beautiful subconsciousness as the black-robed figures around him shoved him towards the tunnel on the cavern's opposite side. Only a few steps behind him came the rest of the Shadowers with Merrin in tow, the force field gone but the black globes still dancing about her stirring form.

His fingernails only dug harder, sending more pain lancing up his hand. His nerves tingled but little awakened. He registered only faint interest when the coils on his wrists and ankles seemed to writhe like live serpents, perhaps because... the tunnel widens and... light at the end of the tunnel...

Storm clouds roiled ominously over the valley. Forks of lightning with rumbling thunder at its anvil illuminated the valley floor, where two titanic legions waged a battle of epic proportions...

The Valley of Ancients. The Lost Battle. Curse it, how long had they been unconscious? Could they already be too late?

Galvanized to action perhaps by the dark mantle lifting as they exited the tunnel, Kendath scanned the malign skies, already teeming with flashing scales and raking claws. He'd never expected Gyre to be readily available, and it seemed this time his pessimism was well-founded. A glint to his right piqued his attention, and he turned slightly to see a golden glimmer all the way across the valley, on the far mountain peak. A sole shaft of sunlight piercing the oppressive thunderheads struck the tiny apparition's golden dome at an edifying angle, setting it aflame.

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On the other side of Kendath Merrin moaned weakly, eyes flickering open. She was pallid, nearly as white as a ghost, and without the iron grips about her inert limbs she would have collapsed.

It took her a moment to fully grasp what went on in the battlefield below - but when she did an inadvertant cry escaped her lips and she wrenched violently and ineffectually at the threads of darkness that bound her. "No - no! Wyvern - "

Here she subsided unwillingly, persuaded to be silent by the unsheathing of an icy blade, but tears sprang to her eyes and spilled down her pale cheeks in despair.

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.....

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Adanil hissed as Kendath and Merrin were led away. What under the Light had happened? He remembered the black-robed sorcerer speaking what must have been an incantation very loudly, and then blinding pain and blackness. Where were they taking the Dragonriders? Why weren't they taking him, too?

Maybe they thought he wasn't a threat to them. He allowed himself a small grin at that thought. The blasted headache he had probably would keep him from thinking clearly for a while, but it shouldn't keep him from wriggling out of his bonds. From the way they looked, they were enchanted, but they were physical enough. He started trying to pull his hands through.

All of the Shadowers had left with Merrin and Kendath, so he had no real need to be quiet, either. They weren't as smart as they were powerful, it seemed--he could see his scimitar on a table across the room, along with Kendath's falchion and Merrin's rapier. Then he looked closer. Ghostly tendrils appeared and disappeared around the weapons, moving in a pattern that left no chance for snatching a weapon without being touched. Maybe the Shadowers were smarter than they seemed.

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