He couldn't run fast enough. The flames caught up with him easily, but fell back just enough to tease him, to nip at his heels like wolves on a fleeing deer. He could feel their teeth through the leather of his boot, could feel the burn as they crept mockingly up his ankle before retreating, howling with laughter. He stumbled, lungs searing his chest, slapping aside branches and skidding over roots as the trees shifted to impede him.

And the fire kept up, step for step, always one step behind him. Take me then if you will, damn it! Take me and have it over with!

In response, the fire exploded. Vermilion bloomed on every branch and leaf, blossoms that rained orange petals, snapping and crackling in the wind. Kendath staggered and fell as flaming walls leaped up on all four sides, closing the distance as the maw of a monster snaps shut to devour him. Unable to stand the brightness, he ducked his head. His fingers clawed at the burnt flesh of his face. This couldn't be happening. Not to him, not to him! He vowed that it'd never happen to him!

"Tsk, tsk. In trouble again, are we?"

Kendath dared to raise his head. "You," he whispered.

"Me." The bent figure grinned, and his teeth gleamed blood-red in the glow of the flames. He passed his iron walking stick from one hand to the other. He began reaching under his cloak, as though groping for something, then stopped at the fear that flickered across the other man's face. His grin widened. "An untimely end, wouldn't you say? Of all the narrow escapes, of all the times a great commanding officer would have impaled your head upon a stake... This is the way you've chosen to go? Tsk, tsk. Like father, like son."

"How do you know about..." Kendath shrank back. "No. You can't know. You're not real. You're not - you're part of the forest! You can't make me..."

"Not real?" the hunchback hissed, and reached into his cloak once more. Slowly, he pulled out a long metal handle, attached to a wickedly spiked head resembling a dragon's claw. "It's been a while, hasn't it, you little upstart. It's been a while since you felt the poison burning through your veins..." Fire at his back, he shuffled forward, then stopped, as though reconsidering. "The fire, or the poison? Shall I let you choose? For I have power over both, you know..."

Kendath rose unsteadily to his feet. "They would have me suffer, but they could never afford to kill me. Neither can you. I don't believe in you."

The hunchback waved a gnarled hand, and the flames evaporated like mist. Ringing silence settled upon the trees, green and vibrant once more. For a while, as he gazed out from beneath his matted tangle of hair, his bloodshot eyes blinked as though in wistfulness. He extended his hand, turned it over so that the pale yellow sunlight highlighted the wrinkles. "You don't believe in me? The flesh that clings to my old bones? The blood that crawls through my sagging veins? Have you forgotten your old friend so easily? No matter. You will remember me again, Kendath."

Clutching the metal dragon's claw, Orkfal Nightshade, master of the Meiltha torture chambers, lurched toward him.

_________________

"Curse it, be quiet," hissed the man in front of her, one white-knuckled hand on the hilt of his weapon. "Do you want them to find us?"

Merrin was staring at him, frozen. He had ragged cropped brown hair, only a shade darker than her own, and a tall slender build that was vaguely skeletal from hunger. He wore at least a few weeks' worth of beard, but behind it and the wild look in his eyes and the way his fingers strayed to the hilt of his weapon like he knew it...

"Jayen?" she whispered. Somewhere in her mind, a thought was beating itself senseless against restraining bars - he's not real! None of it is real! It's a vision, an illusion, it's - MERRIN!

She wasn't listening. She was watching his face.

Behind dead blue eyes, she saw iron gates close and lock. "Jayen?" she croaked again, this time reaching out a trembling hand that paused just short of touching him, as though by doing so she might acknowledge his reality. "Don't you - don't you know me? It's Merrin!"

"I know you," he said, and turned his back.

She followed him, crashing through the underbrush without a care for which of the ghoulish entities of this place might hear. Out of sheer desperation, she caught at his sleeve, unable to suppress a cringe at the realness of it, at the absolute proof against his being a phantom of her own imagination. "Where are we going? Why are you - Jayen, wait!"

Merrin had to scramble to keep up, her entreaties for an answer growing more frantic the faster he went. "Where are Mama and Da? And T'mor, and the twins and Rhie - Jayen, please! Ah, gods - Jayen Tanner, listen to me!"

Faster and faster, till brambles caught at her hands and the hem of her cloak and tree branches slapped her face. It was growing darker, and it took every ounce of Merrin's determination to keep him in sight, to stop him leaving her behind, because he was her brother. He was Jayen, who'd made her little carved dragons and hugged her when she cried...and who, when she left, had stood in the yard until all Merrin could see of him was a tiny dot, waving as desperately as she. She'd been two months short of fifteen.

Just when she was giving up, when he wouldn't stop and she couldn't breathe and the tree branches had become hands, catching at her, keeping her from getting to him - he stopped, and turned, face ugly, to catch her before she fell. The gesture would have been roughly considerate, unaccompanied by a hard shove that sent her back against a tree. Merrin only stared at him mutely. Jayen. Why? Why?

"You want to know where they are?" he demanded hoarsely. "Look."

Had the trees ended there a moment before? The thought merely skimmed the surface of Merrin's mind before others crashed through it like thunderbolts.

The village was ravaged. Flame had reduced it to a charred carcass, with sickly ribbons of oily smoke rising from the remains. Merrin's feet took her forward without her consent. There. That was the smithy, its forge a mess of twisted, melted iron. The setting, blood-red sun made it appear washed in crimson. That was the butcher. That was...

That was the tanner's house.

"Where are they?" she cried, whirling on him, desperately afraid she knew the answer. His dead eyes hardened. He moved to come toward her and instinctively Merrin moved back. Moved back from Jayen! her mind wailed. You know him! How many times did you cry on his shoulder, push him in the snow, watch him carve you a plaything?

"Don't pretend you don't know," he rasped. Merrin couldn't bear to see his expression, and let her eyes drop.

"You killed them!" he yelled hoarsely. "You failed, Merrin! They're dead, because you failed!"

The blood-red sun dipped past the mountains. They plunged into blackness.

_________________

Metal scraped against metal as the shaft of the dragon's claw met Kendath's falchion. With a feral snarl, Kendath smacked the flat of his blade against the shaft, straining against the Nightshade's frail arm and turning it aside.

The dragon's claw clattered to the dirt. The Nightshade staggered back and looked down at it, his sparse bramble of hair screening his face, then gazed back up at Kendath. Bloodshot eyes locked with his. The gaunt, jaundiced mask revealed only blankness. The shriveled lips moved, intoning phrases under rasps of breath. Then those lips formed words, like a hundred snakes, writhing and whispering. "Poor, pitiful wretch. You have much to answer to."

A vein in Kendath's head pulsated, increasing pressure with each beat of his heart, louder, heavier... His mind ruptured. His falchion dropped to the ground.

Screams impaled the silence, which shattered into a thousand tiny shards, each a spray of crimson that stained the trees, the ground, the sky in blood. Except that the trees were no longer trees. Their branches twisted into arms, their bark into faces, and their roots into feet that had them jerking forward, hands outstretched. Politicians, warlords, kings... They closed in, reaching for him, their ashen faces contorted with yearning.

"Return it. Return it. Return it..."

Kendath scrambled back, or started to, before a ghostly hand brushed the nape of his neck. A girl's hand, which quickly retracted as he spun around. He looked into her eyes and saw, etched in their lightless gray depths, the future that would never be hers. He remembered her. Not her name, but her, as she slumbered in her silk-curtained bed. She was the daughter of a Renegade duke, who had betrothed her at birth to a powerful ally. Once joined in marriage, the two fiefdoms would constitute a force to be reckoned with - something the Bloodstone Court could not allow.

Poised above her peaceful form, dagger in hand, Kendath had hesitated. "You're tripping over yourself. You're thinking the wrong thoughts," an exasperated Demon had thought to him. "The spineless thing before you is not a girl. It's not even a human. It's a tool. A tool that, wielded in the hands of our enemies, might defeat us in ten years. Your job is to break that tool early, before its edge hardens."

Her life had ended that night, in one clean stroke. His nightmares hadn't.

Eyes wide and unblinking, she extended her diminutive hand, as though to touch his cheek. Crying out, Kendath fell backward, stumbling, crawling - anything to get away from her. But he found no escape. Icy fingers from behind pressed against his skin; sighing breaths rattled down his neck. They surrounded him, their chests still marked by the slash of his dagger, their mouths still gagging from the poison in their drinks. An heir apparent to Baste, a priestess who had meddled too much, the head of a royal house...

"Return it. Return it."

"Return what?" Kendath cried. "I can't bring it back! It's gone - what you want - it's gone! Too late... I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

They pressed closer, bending toward him to lock their empty eyes with his. Their voices raised, not in mindless mantra, but in anguished plea. "Return it! Return it!"

Their mesmerizing stares bored into his skull, and he couldn't look away no matter how hard he tried. "It's gone. I can't go back," he whispered. But when they only stared back, unblinking, uncomprehending, he burst out, "No! I'm not the one you should turn to. I destroyed it, all right? I can't put it back together. I destroyed it! Why am I here? Ask the gods - they're the ones with the games!" They didn't seem to hear him, which only made him shout more loudly. "I can't bring it back! You hear that? I can't bring it back! So leave! All of you, leave me be!"

To his shock, they obeyed. Like mist on a morning wind, they simply dissolved into the air and left him, on his knees, alone.

The Nightshade, leaning against a tree a little ways away, smiled and nodded at the dragon's claw, still discarded on the ground. "You see, Kendath? Torture of the body you remember well. But you fail to consider that the mind can inflict the most beautiful torture of them all. An entertaining spectacle, wouldn't you say? Your mind is like a jungle of barbs, all tangled, not one harmless. So much blood. I wonder what your father would say, if he knew."

Breath heaving, Kendath stared at him. Torture of the mind. His father. Who was Orkfal Nightshade to speak of a man so far above his worthiness that he stank of a worm in comparison? Who was Orkfal Nightshade, to know so much? He wasn't real. He wasn't -

Kendath didn't allow himself to finish that thought, for in the next hammering heartbeat, he had snatched up his falchion and, roaring savagely, was launching himself at the loathed apparition. Rage blotted his vision with scarlet, but in the midst of the haze he saw with crystal clarity the Nightshade's leering yellow face. His blade came down, tearing through...

Nothing. The Nightshade was gone.

"Tsk, tsk. When will you ever learn that your temper has a habit of landing you in my dungeons?" His eye caught the sweep of a black cloak, and he pivoted, knuckles white on the hilt of his falchion. The Nightshade stood ten feet away, amused. He didn't blink, not even when the dagger came spinning out of Kendath's hand to thud, quivering, on the trunk he'd been standing in front of only a millisecond before. Now five trees to the left, he bared his teeth and beckoned, before winking away yet again. Out of sight, he called from somewhere in the forest ahead. "Come on. Come get me, then."

Prying his dagger out from the tree trunk, Kendath clenched his jaw and broke into a run, following the voice. He bounded for a distance through the tangle of greenery, slashing vines out of the way with his blade, before coming to a panting halt. He pivoted in a full circle, dagger raised.

"This way. Quickly, now. Don't you want to catch me?"

Kendath changed directions, incensed by the mockery in the Nightshade's voice, increasing his weaving route through the trees, his boots thumping harder and faster against the ground... Abruptly, he skidded to a stop and stared. There before him stood a rounded knoll dotted with boulders. And carved into the knoll, inviting him in with its darkness, yawned a cave. He waited, but the only sound that reached his ears was his own uneven breathing. The Nightshade had fallen silent.

There were a thousand practical reasons why he should have refused the invitation and walked past the cave. Ignoring them all, he strode right up and stepped across the threshold between sunlight and shadow.

It took a surprisingly short amount of time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they did, he hastily ducked, for the roof of the cave was spiked with stalactites. He ventured deeper, veering around the stalagmites, ears on edge as the light dimmed behind him. Around the cheek of the tunnel, he detected a murmur - the unmistakeable sound of scales whispering across stone. Elbow bent to snap his dagger up if needed, he pressed himself against the wall and inched around the bend.

"Ah, Ken. It's you."

He froze, and the heart that pounded in his throat threatened to choke him. A trickle of flame sizzled past him and caught on a pile of branches not far away. The firelight trembled on his blade.

"Slow to react, as always. You really are a marvel. I've always wondered how you've managed to survive all these years."

Still, he didn't look past the bend. He couldn't. "Demon," he breathed.

Breath hissed through fiery nostrils. A sigh, dripping with irony. "Once you've found your spine again, I suggest you - No, I'd rather you not look. You might never speak to me again."

That caustic criticism, so familiar, so biting yet so comforting, struck him as a blow in the chest. Steel yourself. No emotion. Where's your discipline? No sooner had these words crossed his mind than he bit back a harsh laugh. It hardly mattered; Demon could read him like a book. Gritting his teeth, he rounded the bend.

"Ken, Ken. I told you not to look."

There, vermilion eyes gleaming, ebony scales devouring the firelight, sprawled Demon. And there, ashen and lifeless, blood oozing from the slashes still fresh on her chest, lay Merrin.

_________________

Flames flared bright against the darkness, a cone of fire from a dragon's maw lighting the black sky. First there was one, and then another, and then wyrms streaked above them in every color, meeting in aerial combat with bellows of rage. Fire and blood rained from the black heavens. Merrin's hands were shaking, but they had to be steady when she pulled her saber from its sheath.

Jayen was standing, his eyes fixed on her, with a rusted broadsword at the ready. She didn't know what she could say, what she could do, that would stem the tide of his rage against her. Was it really my fault? something within her demanded frantically, the words pounding against her skull with the intensity of her hammering heartbeat. Did I really fail? Did I kill them, by letting this evil run free?

But when he came at her she was ready. Jayen was smaller than T'mor, without the ox's shoulders and the bear's build, but what made this duel harder than the other had ever been was that every time she parried, Merrin had to look at the frenzied, wild look in his eyes. Her eyes. The same cobalt blue that was the sea and the sky in unison, the same blue that only they of the Riversmeet Tanners possessed among browns and hazels and greens -

But they weren't blue. They were crimson, washed in the bloody light of the airborne battle above, where dragons shrieked in a black sky over a devastated village. Merrin didn't know those eyes.

And somehow, with that loss, the Jayen whose broadsword came down with the force of a hammer on her saber was no longer her brother. He was a tortured shadow of the man he was, the man Merrin knew he was. "Give him back to me!" she cried, parrying, slashing, stabbing. "I don't know you! You're not my Jayen!"

With her every word came with a jarring strike from him, numbing her wrists and driving Merrin back across the blood-soaked dirt. He was too strong. Merrin's Jayen didn't know how to use a sword. Merrin's Jayen would never have hurt her, not even if it meant his death instead - this was not Merrin's Jayen. And he was silent, dead eyes in his skeletal face betraying not a flicker of the brother she knew.

She stumbled and he struck, driving her to her knees. "You're not real!" she shrieked, thrusting all the strength she possessed into those words. "You can't kill me! You're a shadow, a wraith, you don't know my Jayen! Leave me ALONE!"

The last shout echoed in still air. The broadsword fell from numb fingers. The shell of a man crumpled from within, collapsing into nothing, into dust. The fire in the sky faded to black, black night without a dawn. "My Jayen," Merrin whispered, shaking so violently that her saber nearly fell from her fingers. Her muscles cramped and she couldn't move to sheathe it. The last thing she cried into the suffocating night before she fell was a plea to the gods.

Darkness. Tiny lights, like stars, but with none of the reassuring twinkle. Tiny lights that made Merrin dizzy as they grew, filling her vision blotchily, creating a blurred image of stone and metal. She moaned, and something struck her across the face. A gauntlet.

Her lip was bleeding, Merrin knew dimly. Her eyes flickered fully open, but movement did not come with wakefulness. Her wrists were raw and sore, and her head felt heavy and thick, her mouth dry. She squinted up.

Torchlight lit rock walls, splashing light on things Merrin would never have wanted to see. Every instrument of torture had its niche, its shelf, its space of floor. She didn't want to know what rust-brown liquid stained the stones beneath her feet. Both her wrists were in iron manacles, she could feel. And her lip throbbed from the blow.

Slowly Merrin raised her eyes. Dragon? Human? She blinked. Mistake.

Fingers sheathed in metal grasped her chin, forcing her head up until she had no choice but to look. "Do you know who I am, Merrin Dragonrider?" that raspy, quasi-reptilian voice was demanding, in tones she'd never forgotten. That voice from her nightmares.

High General Ironlegs watched her fight the chains until Merrin was panting and panic-stricken, hunted eyes fixed on him. "Well?" he repeated, baring sharpened teeth.

"Yes," she whispered, trembling, too terrified to move. His eyes were hypnotic. She couldn't tear hers away, couldn't even beat herself senseless against the manacles to fade into unconsciousness in order to escape. Tears were making tracks down her dirty cheeks, tears that Merrin wasn't aware of.

"Don't cry," he said sardonically. "Your eyes will be red. Someone's here to see you."

"No," said Merrin doggedly. "You're - you're not real - "

There was no conviction behind the words. Another reptilian smile and Ironlegs turned toward a dark stairway. "There he is. I'll tell him you're here."

Footsteps on the stairs. Merrin squeezed her eyes shut, determined never, never to open them. She would not look. Without asking she knew this would break her and she would fail, and Jayen's haunted eyes would be in her dreams until the day she died. "Gods," she whispered. "Gods, if never before help me now."

Her eyes were closed, but Merrin's couldn't stop her ears.

"Message for you, High General."

She couldn't hear anything now for the roaring in her ears, but it was too late. That voice was one she knew beyond doubt. Merrin opened her eyes.

Kendath turned to go, casting one vaguely disinterested look over his shoulder at her. He never stopped once, all the way up the stairs, no matter how she yelled herself hoarse crying his name.

_________________

The collision of spell caused a roar that echoed in the woods, the two figures both struggling to overcome their foes next spell, trying to determine their foes thoughts beforehand. However not all was as it seemed, truly it was the sage, who held the upper hand despite appearances. Garthag felt himself tire and he didn`t have none too many spells, which he was able to cast. He had tried to preserve his strength, but he knew all too well, that when the old sage unleashed his powers there would be hell to pay. Garthag chose act out of desperation, just like that that fateful night so long ago, and sent a fireball flying towards the old man. Truly not an effective spell against wizards, who knew how to protect themselves from fire or in the middle of a frozen landscape...

Only now did Garthag realize, that they no longer stood in the midst of the woods, but on the very edge of a small village. The two white figures cast long shadows outwards from the village as it was enclosed in a ring of magical fire, putting an end to any escape attempts. No wonder, they were not there simply to be scorched, but as a sacrifice. Garthag grinned as the cold had already taken into effect and he felt how his advance became far more cumbersome. He had already sprang into a run towards the old sage, who had been distracted by the fireball for at least a while, perhaps this could catch him off guard... Like the last time? No, that was not what happened.

Everything within Garthag`s world stopped for a moment, including him, but soon enough he realized that he was paralyzed by the sages spell. The old sage revealed a slight smirk at Garthag before approaching him, Garthag could only watch as the man unsheathed a knife from his belt. The sage stopped before Garthag, but did not make the effort to strike instead he quietly examined Garthag before gazing at the village.

"Does it make you feel better telling people about what happens here tonight?" The sage inquired whilst quite skillfully dancing the dagger in his long, withered fingers.

"I wouldn`t know, I have never told anyone about that..." Garthag protested with a grin as apparently the spell still allowed him to speak, but hardly move the rest of his body.

"Liar, you told that assassin, why? Because you thought he might understand or simply you were seeking the opposite reaction, but oh how far you stretch the truth only to make him despise you. You simply have become to thrive on the fact that they despise you, you enjoy it because you think it allows you to hide..."

The sage left the sentence hanging in the air before quickly making a thrusting move towards Garthag`s heart. The tip of the blade simply pierced the small layer of robes, nothing more before being drawn back by the taunting sage. Garthag remained calm despite the eminent danger and besides he couldn`t have even dodged, if he had wished to. Garthag remained calm because what the old man was saying was not slander or an outrageous claim, it was the truth. However at the same time he felt his anger on growing deeper, this was going too far, how dared they go this far in order to test him!

"Your emotions... and the guilt you have carried with you ever since what happened to your village" He finished with a dry tone, "Yet you believe that being human is a proud thing, that is why you despise the undead and all other unnatural beings. However in truth it is you, who are disgusting and even worse than the undead. When you had the chance to display your emotions you lock them away, pretending, lying to yourself that you don`t have use for such things.

You are in... no you have become sub-human, a being that thrives on the agony of others and believes that power shall fill the gaps in his soul... now if you excuse me I have a village to deliver...."

Garthag would have been visibly shaken and trembling in rage, if he could have moved at that moment. He wished to to gut the old man`s illusion, he wanted to scorch the slanderous filth before the charade of his past too place again. However there was a maelstrom of thoughts that ran throughout his mind all the time, who killed them?

I killed them all! They were in my way on the path to greatness, I was chosen to wield the great power! Blame me!

Lies!

A voice cried out before Garthag, he turned his gaze forward and quietly gazed at a young man dressed in grayish, cumbersome robes. His clothing was burned and had received some minor slashes to it, but the young man himself appeared to be in great anguish, both physically and emotionally. The young man, barely even 17 stood there with his eyes filled with disgust and yet odd enough sorrow while he stared at Garthag. Also there was one thing Garthag wished not to see, pity, the only thing he wished not to see anymore. It reflected from those eyes like it had been reflected from the eyes of his dying sister at her final moments. Garthag tried to turn his head, tried to look away, but he couldn`t, he was at the mercy of his past. His outer frozen shell was being shattered, blow after blow, stripping bare the chilling truth.

A steel flashed in the young Garthag`s hand and he began to move after the old sage with a merciless, vengeful glee in his eyes. The present Garthag could only stared in horror, he wanted to scream, he wanted to charge past the boy and rip the old sage away from the summoning circle that was before him. The circle was composed of medium sized stones, which almost anyone could carry and they were probably the only thing that made a working circle upon the snowy ground. Garthag couldn`t help, but thinking about the truth at those horribly slowly moving moments as he watched the young apprentice approach his master.

I... I wasn`t strong enough, I couldn`t save them, they all died because I was weak. If I had just known, I had been just a little more powerful I could have...

The old sage slowly approached the village and began the summoning ritual, to call forth a being of the lower planes and offering the village as a sacrifice. After some elaborate hand movements and words of magic, the spell was almost complete and at that moment the cold steel did it`s unforgiving duty. The daggers blade had sank deep into the sages back, there was a moment of creeping silence, that told of what was to come. The blade withdrew and the two Garthag`s stared as the old sage burst into a maniacal chuckle, only the other knew what was to come and the young one would have to witness his whole life being wiped before him.

"Thank you Garthag, blood was the last component in order to summon it..."

The sage said before falling in his back on the edge of the circle and before anyone could react a large blaze of fire burst in the center of the circle. In the midst of the fire stood a large, horn headed, disgusting demon grinning it`s great predatory fangs at those before him. Those eyes pierced trough the young Garthag, who stood paralyzed in horror before the demon. It was too much for the young mage to handle....

Suddenly it all faded away and Garthag found himself standing within an ice cavern, there was a summoning circle there almost like the one on the outskirts of the village that night, but this one was carved in the floor as, if prepared for many years. The room was filled with the stench of burnt flesh, it had been the sight of an ambush upon the very same, hideous creature that had wiped his village clear with demon fire all those years ago. Garthag turned to stare at a figure standing near him, a figure dressed in rags, her black hair was long and ragged, but there was something wrong about her. The eyes stared beyond him as, if not registering him, but she seemed to acknowledge his presence. Before Garthag had still managed to keep his emotions restrained except for his anger and frustration, which he sometimes allowed to himself. Now however before this harmless and innocent thing, he couldn`t but feel that the walls that had surrounded him for so long were not there.

"Little Liliane"

Garthag said with a choked up voice, calling his sister with her monicker name that he had invented for her in their childhood days due to her being younger than him. Garthag had to admit one fact, no matter what kind of illusion he saw before him it was hard not to let one single drop form in his eye.

"Why? Why couldn`t I save you from the suffering and the hell you were put trough?"

Garthag asked partially from himself and extended his hand slowly towards her, perhaps it would be all right. Maybe he could just grab a safe hold of her and save her, just this one person dear to him, why couldn`t he have held only little Lily? Little Liliane, the most innocent person of all within his village, one that had aspired to become a simple housewife. No great ambition, just simple desire to live peacefully and they had both shared that when they were young, they had been content.

"A strange question coming from you, bro, it`s like you said it before... you were too weak."

The young girl answered with a carefree, unshakable tone, that cut Garthag`s soul more than any knife. Indeed a knife, it was suddenly as, if one cut Liliane`s face and sliced a fresh wound in it before it suddenly closed as soon as it had appeared. It was all his fault, his responsibility, everyone he had held dear had died because he wasn`t strong enough. There was just too much pain, that kind of loss, especially when one had to suffer for years for his sake only to die in his arms. Bloody, torn, turned inside out time and again.

_________________

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!

Adeila was not lost. She had simply misplaced her companions in an unfamiliar forest and was now attempting to relocate them. She had never left the marked path, though even that seemed to be constantly shifting.

The birds had stopped singing some time ago, and it was now entirely silent except for the occasional rustling of leaves in the faint breeze. The whole forest seemed to be deserted, yet Adeila could not help but feel as though she were being watched. There was something...not right about this place, something incongruous about the apparent innocence of her surroundings. It was....

Why are you here?

Adeila whirled around, but saw nothing but trees. After a moment, she sighed, then slowly turned back around. The path continued to stretch onward, but she could have sworn that it had been going in the opposite direction a moment ago. The trees seemed closer, too...more restricting.

Why are you here?

"I am looking for my companions," she said warily, searching the shadows that lurked beyond the nearest trees.

Why are you here? Why look for them? Why care? Why come in the first place?

"To help," she answered distractedly, now looking more intently for a way out of the small clearing.

The trees blocked her every attempt. Help? echoed the voice mockingly. What can you possibly offer to a trained assassin, a powerful mage, and the Chosen of the gods? You are no warrior.

"No, I am a healer," Adeila replied evenly, outward calm belying her growing unease. By the stars, she wanted out. She now realized what it was that disturbed her so about this forest - nothing was alive. There were highly accurate mockeries, of course, but it was all just that: a mockery. The whole place was simply unnatural.

She was not certain why she continued to talk, except that it made her feel fractionally less alone. If nothing else, it masked the eerie silence that had fallen over everything else. "Even great warriors are injured, on occasion. That, I may help with."

To what purpose?

"I do not yet know," she said dismissively. How had she found the path before? Simply looked, and there it was, it seemed. So why could she not find it now? "I will help them in whatever way I am able, whenever I am able."

Yes, because you are so often able. You mend their scrapes and bruises and treat fevers and coughs, but when the situation becomes dire, when you are truly needed....

"Be quiet," Adeila interjected tightly, by now pacing back and forth across the clearing. "You've no right-"

To what? Speak the truth? Every time that they have counted on you, you have failed. Every time that you have stood between them and disaster, you have tried to flee. And yet you believe that it will not be so when it is not the lives of a few villagers, but the fate of the world itself that hangs in the balance? You cannot help them.

"I will stand, I will help them, and you will let me through," she countered with growing strength. She had ceased pacing and now stood motionless in the center of the clearing, daring the forest to toy with her further. "I will not be trapped and goaded like some animal. This is little more than a test, and you will not get the better of me. Let. Me. Through."

Stillness prevailed for a few long seconds, and then the trees before her vanished as though the path had been there all along. Beyond, however, lay not more trees, but a beach. Adeila followed the path curiously and soon found herself on the outskirts of a small fishing village. It at first seemed deserted, but it soon became clear that all activity had simply been centralized. People hurried back and forth across the village square, some bearing medical supplies, others provisions, and still others makeshift stretchers. The ailing were being placed inside the main meeting hall, where their needs could be met as a collective group. Where they could die in at least relative comfort.

Adeila had been watching, motionless, when a hand on her arm nearly made her jump. As startling as that had been, it was nothing compared to her shock when she turned and faced her 'attacker.' When she was finally able to speak, it was scarcely above a whisper.

"Dan...."

Turn away. Turn away. She isn't real. She can't be real.

Yet even as his mind screamed the words, Kendath couldn't turn away. Transfixed on the sight of her, he felt his legs carrying him toward the body and his knees striking the cold stone floor. The orange edge of the firelight deepened the shadows upon her white face, so that her cobalt blue eyes stood in stark contrast, like sapphires in a field of snow. He lifted her head, cradling her in his arms, and brushed his hand across the soft curve of her cheek. He stared into those blue eyes and couldn't close them, yet couldn't force himself to look away.

"Why?" he whispered.

The heat from Demon's sigh blasted him in the face. He caught a glimpse of shifting black scales and knew his dragon to be watching him, almost staring him down. He didn't meet the challenge. At length Demon sighed again. "The world as it is..." the ebony dragon said, in as wistful a tone as his rider had ever heard him betray. In a heartbeat, Demon was back. "Gods and curses, Kendath. This girl - this puppet of the gods - has you wrapped around her finger on an iron chain. You're the puppet of a puppet. Apparently you've finally hit the bottom."

Merrin's stiff body pressed against his chest. Kendath closed his eyes and waited for the raw spill of emotions. He waited for the anger. He waited for the pain. And while he waited, he listened to each hammer of his heart, stifling at first, then slowly... slowly...

He opened his eyes and saw the gleam of blood on her chest. He noticed, for the first time, the odd contortion of her limbs, as though she'd died in agony. Bile burned in his throat. Mouth twisting, he dropped her and scrambled away.

She wasn't real.

Staggering to his feet, his dagger falling from nerveless fingers, he lurched backward, away from the corpse that was not Merrin, away from the mass of scales and spikes that was not his dragon. He kept retreating until he found himself flattened against the wall, and if he could have melted through sheer stone rock, he would have. Anything to forget the naked firelight on its pale face. Anything to turn from that vermilion stare. So tangible. So believable.

"You're not going to kill me? Too afraid to try?" the creature asked. It snaked its head down to meet his gaze. Another challenge. "You amaze me. There was a time when you would have destroyed everything within you and without for the sake of vengeance."

Kendath felt his stomach heaving. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into a corner, away from this repulsive entity, and retch. How could the ancient Renegades have known? Was it so easy to peel back the layers of his past, to find what he held so closely to his soul, and exploit it, distort it into what he recognized but hardly even knew? Stop it. What more do you want from me? Make it stop. Please. Please.

When he looked again, they were gone. Both of them, vanished as though they'd never been. The fire still flickered, consuming the dead branches, but it cast its light upon an empty cave. His eyes narrowed. No, not quite so empty. For at the back of the cave, where the creature impersonating Demon once sprawled, stood a door, slightly ajar and glowing its warm invitation.

_________________

Merrin drifted in and out of the terrible unescapable consciousness, which almost began to seem like bleak reality. With all the intensity she possessed, she clung to the images that her mind knew as real - Kendath not an empty-eyed Meiltha, but standing on a windswept mountaintop with his arms around her; Adeila, motherly, telling her to sleep, while her ribs ached fiercely; even Garthag, sneering, was more welcome than the visions she feared would assault her if she fully woke.

When she could no longer escape it, Merrin opened her eyes, shaking, expecting a terrifying reptile-human hybrid to use one of the instruments of torture she'd seen -

But there was nothing. Or more correctly, nothing except her. A huge, bleak field of barren ground stretched in every direction. All four horizons shimmered in heat, and the sky was faded periwinkle, as though bleached by the glaring sun. Hesitantly, Merrin felt her wrists. The skin was broken and raw, evidence that she had been there, that the manacles hadn't been a dream.

She almost let the thought slip by before catching it. No! None of this was real, none of it! She must remember, must not let herself forget! Merrin stood up, and took a deep breath of dust-ridden air, which made her cough. What now?

She took a hesitant step toward what she thought was the north horizon, hardly believing that she was intended to walk. But it was another twenty steps before there was the faintest of sounds. She turned, squinting against the glare, to scan the edges of the dome of pale sky. Just heat haze. Or...?

That was light, glinting on - something. She stood very still, feeling the barest of vibrations under her feet. A shape soared up, glittering gold against the bleached sky. Then more. Merrin swiveled fully, turning in the center of the sun-scalded ground, and watching in growing horror as vast armies on both side of the boundless plain approached each other. Approached each other, with her directly in the middle.

Knowing it was hopeless, knowing there was no way she could escape anywhere, knowing that all there was before her consisted of dull sky and blazing sun, Merrin ran. When she halted, gasping, sweat drenching her tunic and damp tendrils of copper hair falling in her eyes, the armies had not changed direction. She was still the pivotal point of the vast hosts of cavalry and infantry whose footsteps pounded in the sand beneath her feet. Unlike the rest of her, which was soaked in perspiration, Merrin's mouth was bone dry.

Out of sheer helplessness, and the fear that if she stood there paralyzed with fear she'd go mad, Merrin studied the banners held over both armies, which were close enough to see. Realization began to dawn when she identified, first, a sunburst on crimson, and swiveled knowing that the Meiltha insignia was what she'd see next.

What did this mean? Old battles flashed across Merrin's mind - the Lost Battle foremost, when thousands upon thousands had fallen in a gruesome rout, in which both sides lost heavily and neither emerged victorious...but this was not the Lost Battle. What was this?

While she stood, mind racing, the armies drew closer, moving faster and faster, ready to crush her beneath their feet, ready to tear her apart. Merrin stood, transfixed, every pore of her crying out to the gods for aid. No answer. No answer. There had to be a way out.

As if answering her plea, a portal shimmered into view before her eyes. Three steps - three steps, and she would be safe.

But Merrin stood there still. It couldn't be that easy.

Every muscle protesting, every inch of her demanding that she step through that portal, Merrin turned around. She could pick out the insignia on the Renegade warlord's armor. She could see the glint of weapons, thirsty for the blood that could soak the barren land beneath her feet, the talons of the dragons hungry for prey. The portal beckoned. But that wasn't the answer.

Merrin started walking. Then she broke into a run, coughing in the dust of the horses' hooves, blinded by the sun, but through it, her eyes fixed on that warlord's armor. Had to get between them. Had to stop it. Had to stop this battle from ever happening -

She ground to a halt, skidding on the sandy ground. "Stop!" she screamed over the hooves, the tramping boots, the roars of dragons. "In the name of all the gods, STOP!"

The Renegade warlord stared down at her, expressionless. She turned to the Meiltha. His belt bristled with weapons. The man was huge, a giant, a giant ready to rend her in half with one careless sweep of his sword and toss her aside, a little dragonrider trampled under millions of hooves and feet.

She stepped forward, head raised. "Stop," she whispered, trembling, reaching out her hands in a gesture to halt them.

The sun beat down. The sudden quiet assaulted her ears. The portal swallowed her.

_________________

Garthag`s fingers finally reached Liliane`s cheek only as, if to confirm her existence, frightened that she might turn into ash and scatter at any moment. As everything seemed calm, there was a maelstrom of emotions and thoughts raging inside Garthag himself. This could not be real, she was not her, and she had died years ago. On that night in the village, she had been taken as a trophy by the demon, just for the fun of it and as it had felt to it`s home plane it had dragged her with down into that hellish existence as well. However simply the sight of his, pure and innocent sibling made Garthag simply want to try to save her somehow all tough he knew that any attempt would be futile. She was an illusion, an image crafted out of his memory, which was exactly why she felt as real as in essence it was her. He wished to save her, despite how futile it seemed, but he knew he couldn’t and he felt doubt creeping into his mind.

Was this his limit in holding back his emotions? Was this what the great Garthag had been reduced to? How had he ever hoped to become powerful? When he couldn’t bear to see the image of his torn up sister, a girl, who had died years ago, still awoke those feelings in him. The ambition and the coldness inside him demanded him to snuff out the pathetic excuses, they told he was being deceived and the image before him should be evaporated in order to advance. It was so simple to remove and obstacle in order to advance, this wouldn’t be any different from all those others. He had lusted for power and worked too long to let this happen, this had to stop, he couldn’t allow himself to...

"It’s fine bro, I won’t feel bad, if you kill me. On the contrary I would be happy, I won’t hold a grudge…."

Liliane said with a forgiving yet surprisingly chilling voice and that voice again crept into Garthag`s soul, wounding hi,. He felt angry, he wanted to slap her across the face, but he held his hand for the sake of his memories. After a moment of silence Liliane seemed to lose consciousness and would have slipped onto her face into the snowy ground had Garthag not grabbed her. Garthag quietly examined his sister, who rested in his arms in such calamity it always amazed him how such a tortured soul could do so.

He bit his teeth together in an attempt trying to stop himself from shedding tears; he tried to control the floodgates as the pitiful image of his beloved sister laid in his arms. So fragile and weak, she was like a flower before a blizzard, doomed to perish before her time. She must have been insane yet at that time what she said always seemed to be the sanest things he would ever hear come out of anyone’s mouth.

"Bro.... After the night it, that demon you vanquished and saved me from, took me. It cast a shadow before my eyes, it couldn’t see anymore; only hear it in the darkness. From the darkness it always came, seeking for more and more pleasure, I became it’s rag doll. It cut me, smashed my bones, drowned me and toyed with me. All I could hear was the gnashing of it’s teeth, heavy breath and movements, then there was the laughter and it’s taunts. It drove me insane, being tortured for no reason and never receiving anything, but hate towards me.

It struck me and mocked me; I didn’t scream at first and tried to hold up, hoping that it would let me go soon. However in time it didn’t let me go; it continued to taunt me and told me that you had survived alone. So... I hoped you’d come for me... all those years passed and at first I tried to push away the pain by thinking about you and mom. But the memories weren’t enough and you never came for me; I had to grow up on my own, down in that dark hellish pit. I realized that you might not come or couldn’t come, that my fate was sealed and that I would have to submit to hoping that upon it’s whims the demon would end my life one day.

However I couldn’t forget about mom, you or the village folk. They were always there, so I hoped you would go out into the world and become a great mage as you always dreamed like those in the stories old man Ignas used to tell the villagers. Now that you are here and you saved me from that thing, I know you’ve already achieved what you dreamed of, at least somehow. You can live on your life now and live the dream you had, but I have one selfish request bro, kill me."

Liliane explained with a tone that changed from horrified to sorrowful, but yet during all that time she wore a smile on her face making Garthag wonder whether she had lost more her sanity in the demons hands. Such scars could never be removed, she could never be healed after what was done to her, but she could still live on. But what kind of life would have that been, a blind helpless youngster being cared by her older brother, who could have a life of his own, if not his devotion to his family?

She wished for her own death, she saw the fate before her and only wished for release from the pain that was life. Living on had become a burden, a pain that did no longer want to endure. Suddenly Liliane burst into tears, only sinking the dagger deeper into Garthag`s soul and heart, he was already bleeding, could they not see that? Were these tests meant to rip him open like this or were it his memories, that did so instead of the test itself? It didn`t really matter as he tried to resist what was to come, tried to steer fate and the past into another direction.

“Stop it Lily, I can’t… just.. Kill you, my own flesh and blood, not after the time and effort I went trough. I’ve done it once, I barely did it then and doubted myself every step of the way, I still do… You always ask the impossible of me.”

Garthag pleaded trying to reverse the events of the past, he didn’t want to go trough this again, it was the very thing that made him what he was today. It was the day he decided abandon all emotions, pity and remorse, freeze his heart that he couldn’t be harmed again or that he would not harm anyone else again like that. Was this a reversal of those events, going trough it again would force him to feel the pain, the guilt and the grief he had suffered? He didn’t want it, but still the words to come would compel him to obey. They were not a command, but a pleading from a tortured being that still held onto her innocence and those words would compel him far more efficiently than any command.

"Bro, let me go, I can’t go on by myself, it hurts. I just wanna see mom, alright? I can’t go on like this; I just wanna sleep with the rest, can’t I? Just this once be an irresponsible brother and hurt me, if not for me then for yourself that you won’t have to see me like this! I don… don’t wanna hol..d you back anymo… re.."

Liliane said with a tearful, trembling voice as Garthag for once gazed at her with horrified eyes, so there was no changing the past, he had already once had the chance to help her with the crystal, but he had not wanted to. He had believed that chapter of his life to have been buried and forgotten, that no strings had attached him to his old life anymore. He now knew he was wrong, he could hide it and fake whatever he felt, but before this image couldn’t lie to himself. She was dead and gone already, he couldn’t save her anymore and he would once more have to let her go.

With a tear starting to slowly fall off his cheeks, Garthag grabbed the hilt of his dagger with a trembling hand and raised the blade into a strike. The very same dagger, which had taken the life of his master, would now take that of his sisters, the one person he had protected and cared for the most. The dagger gleamed in the dim lighting of the ice cavern and like a fang sank into the chest of the helpless little being in his arms. The horrid silence and once again the realization of what he had done would have driven Garthag to scream were it not for the last words that escaped the lips of Little Liliane.

“Thanks bro…”

She said faintly and before he knew it, she was far away, beyond his reach and underground, buried where his village once stood. Garthag realized that he too was there, standing on a snowy barren strip of land near the slopes of a great mountain. Before him rose a stone wall, in this stone wall he had once carved the name of all those, who had died at this sight. Their bodies were buried as best as they could have, only Liliane`s body had been saved from the flames and the rest were bones or ash.

Garthag took few shaking steps towards the wall before collapsing on his knee`s before it and placing his hand against it, his hand laid upon the very last three names, which belonged to a certain once content family.
Liliane and Garthag, were the names he had carved on the wall in order to signify his own transcendence and detachment from this place. That was the greatest lie he had ever made, the one that was meant to deceive none other than himself.

“Forgive...”

Garthag muttered a fading word with a tearful and frustrated voice as he placed his head against the wall, hoping that it would fade away. What had he become? In search for power, had he forsaken that in, which his family had believed in? Had he betrayed them by doing what he had done? They wouldn’t have recognized him anymore, if they were alive, they would have only seen a perversion of the talented young man whom they had cared for.

What the hell was he? Human? In-human or sub-human? Was he a human, who had simply forsook what made him human yet still tried to convince himself, that he was a human being and proud of it? Or was he a cold monster, which had these memories and feelings that he could not tear free from? However why was he then feeling these things? These emotions? Why the hell had he already shed tears like this? That one night Kendath had accused him of being a coward, fearing his own humanity and he had just laughed at it. He had even gone as far as laying to the assassin about the fate of his village in order to shock the man, but what if Kendath had a point all along? Was he a coward? Who knew, all he wanted was to for this to stop, he had enough of it all.

No more pain, no more of these memories or questions storming inside him, it was enough to see all he had once had perish before him once, but twice was too much especially when it felt too real. Garthag took a deep breath and sighed, he wiped away the few tears that had escaped the flood gates and leaned against the wall, quietly staring into the distance. He saw a winged figure amidst the mountain peaks, gliding ever so free and majestic in it’s frozen domain, but he hardly cared anymore.

Let the lizards fly, they are of no concern or threat, they never mattered to him nor would. Only the magic and what he held dear did, only the magic he had left, but even now that power felt hollow and empty…

_________________

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!

"We came back," he said, looking around. "Now what?"

"I don't know...." Adeila murmured uncertainly. She knew this. She knew what happened. She had lived these days over and over for many years after. She was at once an active participant and a passive observer. This was not just a vision - this was a memory. "You did not have to come."

Dan smirked and indicated his ring. "I was under the impression that it was part of the agreement - 'Until death do us part.'"

Adeila smiled back thinly. "We will move on, soon," she promised. "I just..."

"I know," Dan said quietly, embracing her with his strong, familiar, safe arms. "I could not just leave the village in the middle of such a crisis either."

Adeila said nothing in response, merely savoring the sense of security, however fleeting. However false.

"It is all your fault, you know."

"What do you mean?" Adeila asked in surprise. That wasn't right. That wasn't how it went. He wasn't supposed to....

"Had you ignored your selfish desires, had you not left in the first place, you could have put an end to this before it killed so many. Or, had you been strong enough to move forward without looking back...you might still have me."

Adeila pulled away abruptly. Dan's expression had not changed, his voice remained pleasantly calm, but something was wrong. Regardless of appearances, this was not her Dan. This was not her husband. "How dare-"

"You know that I am right, Adeila. For all that you may pretend to be serene and wise and content, you are afraid - afraid to move forward, and yet unwilling to remain in one place. You hesitate between the two, until both options are lost. And then everyone suffers the consequences."

"I..."

"You are doing it again even now."

Suddenly, the seen shifted, They were in the same village, but it was different. Buildings burned - shops, gathering places, homes that had stood for generations. Not a single structure had been spared. She advanced slowly once again, drawn by some inexplicable curiosity, only to stop in sheer horror as she reached the village square. There, in the midst of the inferno, lay countless bodies. Old men, young men, men who were little more than boys - all dead. All slaughtered.

"No..." she whispered, turning away from the gruesome sight. She looked to Dan, who seemed as impassive as ever. "No, this cannot-"

"The Meiltha were coming; you knew that when you left. Some were actually brave enough to stay behind and fight."

In spite of herself, Adeila turned and looked again. She knew them. All of them. That one had nearly lost his finger in a carpentry mishap when he was fourteen. That one had first come to her some twenty years ago as an eight-year-old boy who had sprained his wrist by falling from a tree, and had just last week brought his own little boy for the very same thing. That one's infant son had nearly been lost to a fever just last week and still wasn't fully recovered.

All dead.

"What are you doing here, Adeila?"

Adeila drew a slow breath to steady herself. "The will of the gods."

"The gods would sacrifice an entire village for their ends?"

"Most of the village escaped. Those who remained...knew what they were doing. I could not have helped."

"You abandoned them."

"I had reason!"

"Yes, until you have reason to abandon that reason," Dan countered. "What if I told you that the Meiltha were now following the refugees with the intent of killing them all? Women and children are easy enough to track."

"They will not."

"They already are. If you left now, you might be able to warn them - protect them, even. You are more adept than you let on."

"I cannot turn back now!"

"Can't you?" Suddenly, two door materialized on either side of them, just within Adeila's peripheral vision. Dan, seeming to once more be her Dan, turned around and looked down at her pleadingly. "Adeila, please. I do not blame you for the past - that was truly my choice, and you could not have changed it. But our friends, Adeila....They are practically family! You have the opportunity to save them all, and you will not? You would rather continue to follow those who could manage without you?"

Adeila bit down on her lip and looked away, unable to bear the intensity of those familiar blue eyes for any longer. "Dan, I..."

"The door on the left will take you home to the villagers whom you swore to serve. The door on the right leads to the next test. I cannot tell you what it is, Adeila, but know that it only becomes harder from here. Which way will you choose?"

Adeila hesitated further, looking from one door to the other. She looked back to Dan, who had fallen completely silent. She looked forward to the mass carnage brought by the Meiltha forces. Closing her eyes briefly, she took a shaky breath and unclenched her hands.

She went right.

Plains of Despair. Monolithic stones of the blackest obsidian, casting long shadows in the scarlet-streaked sky. A dark slab of an altar, surrounded by the encircling stones. And on the altar... leaping high as though bestowed with lives of their own...

Flames. Crimson flames. Crimson like blood, like the blood that spilled when they raised the ceremonious dagger, its blade glinting in the sun, and cut her throat. Except they never did cut her throat. They lit her on fire. Not white fire, but crimson fire, stronger and hungrier than the white fire, and the white fire didn't stand a chance. Where were the silver dragons, the shining riders, the enigmatic savior - as prophecized by the Chronicles?

Where were the gods?

Kendath gazed out over the desolation and found it hard to believe that gods existed. He'd dreamed, strangely, of the Plains of Despair, and the wasteland of his dream was similar to the wasteland he remembered that day, weeks or eons ago, when they'd fallen through the gates of time and found themselves lost on the shifting sands. That wasteland had been barren, yes, but it had also been... naturally so. Scraggly shrubs had groped through the cracked earth, and he recalled all too clearly the wind raking the ocean of sand and scattering it into his eyes.

His aching limbs eliciting a groan, he staggered to his feet and scanned the bleak landscape. No shrubs. No wind. Everything was still. Eerily still, as though no living feet had ever marred the ground, as though no living mouth had ever opened to breathe in the air. The utterly flat desolation, colorless in its monotony, shadowed by the roiling clouds overhead, stretched as far as the eye could see, fading into the horizon in a blur of gray. It exuded a sense of eternity, of timelessness and coldness and vastness, and Kendath suddenly felt very lost and infinitely tiny, as though the world could open beneath him and swallow him up whenever it pleased.

Alone. To be the only living creature in this land... Suddenly desperate, he spun around, full circle, squinting into the distance for anyone - anything - that defied the dark uniformity. Nothing. A choking sensation building in his chest, he rotated again, more slowly this time, his gaze sliding over the terrain for the slightest... There. Relief weakening his knees, he broke into a lurching run for the small, slumped figure in the distance, a darker blotch against the sand.

He easily underestimated the distance, as painfully noted after a long run that brought him no closer to the slumped figure than before. Hands braced against his knees and teeth gritted in frustration, he stared at the motionless sand beneath him to catch his breath. How convenient it would be if he could simply will whatever he wanted! Wasn't this a test, and weren't these illusions anyway? If he could somehow pit his will against those of the mages that'd conjured these apparitions... and somehow win...

When he looked up again, the slumped figure was unmistakeably, irrevocably closer than it was before.

Hardly daring to believe his fortune, he approached it. He first spotted a crown of golden hair, vibrant and brilliant in the dreary landscape. Adeila. Her eyes were closed, but a faint blush warmed her lightly wrinkled cheeks. If anything, she appeared to be flesh and blood - the polar opposite of illusion. The pulse at her neck, at least, felt real. But where were Merrin and Garthag? He straightened and squinted once again into the horizon. And there, materializing even as the question formed in his mind, were two more shapes, hazy in the distance. Which one...? Did it matter? He broke into a sprint for one of them and fervently willed it to be Merrin.

He found himself beside her in an instant, though when he glanced over his shoulder, Adeila lay only ten steps away. A single look at Merrin's face, pale under a curtain of copper-tinted hair, brought all the visions crashing back - Merrin ashen and still beneath Demon's claw, which dripped blood onto the stone floor. Wanting, pleading, for her to be real and not some cruel, twisted illusion, he knelt beside her and brushed the hair off of her face. Her cheek was warm beneath his hand. He almost collapsed in relief. Desperately, he hugged her against his chest as he'd done in the cave with Demon - except this time she was alive and breathing, and he could feel her warmth against his arms as he held her and buried his face in her hair.

But then she stirred and murmured something in her unconsciousness, and he gently laid her back down and rose to his feet. In the east, a faint orange glowed on the horizon... or was he imagining it? Sunrise seemed an alien concept in this place - an evidence of time.

_________________

The thought that sprang instantaneously into Merrin's head, the moment she began to regain a tenuous grasp on consciousness, was - she had to stop them, they couldn't battle or they would all die - she had to stop them -

She jerked upright, already making to scramble to her feet, and stopped. As if she'd been staring too long at the image, the two armies briefly superimposed themselves on the east and west horizons, vanishing on her first blink. She was breathing fast and shallowly, and Merrin swallowed and gulped a breath, feeling her heart hammering beneath her tunic. She twisted to squint around her, and saw first a black-clad Meiltha, empty-eyed, weapons of every variety hanging from his belt.

Her heart thudded to a stop. No. No, no, NO! Merrin squeezed her eyes shut. It wasn't him. It wasn't him. With all her being she willed it not be him. Not her Kendath. Not her Jayen, not her Kendath, none of it was real. She wouldn't allow it to be real, not if she could stop it. Never, never would she believe that Kendath could...

Merrin opened her eyes, teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached, still trembling with the effort of willing all her illusions not to be real, and found the veil of deceptive unreality now only over the dull sky and the expanse of wasteland. The figure a few feet beyond her was very, very real.

Her heart thudded back into regular beats, and Merrin scrambled to her feet and ran to him, catching his sleeve, stopping breathlessly to stare up into his face. There was a few moments' pause and then she exhaled shakily, gaze still fixed on his face. "Ah, gods," she said, finding the return to breathing normally quite an ordeal and gasping the words, "I thought - I thought - you were..." but the memory hardly bore remembering, let alone repeating. Merrin swallowed the words. She stood, wordless, grappling inwardly with the overwhelming need for the safety of his embrace and the pervading fear that such an impulsive reaction would only leave her, more than ever, to turn to her own cold comfort in the absence of his.

The two fizzled out within her and Merrin only reached, tentatively, to brush his face with her fingertips. The moment ended abruptly. She dropped her eyes, wrapping both arms around herself as if to ward off some encroaching cold, and asked the ground, "What - what do we have to do, what now?"

_________________

His eyelids felt heavy and it was as, if some invisible force forced him to rest as he remained sitting against the cold stone wall. Before darkness took over he quietly gazed at the place where his village would have existed and could have sworn to have seen someone moving. However he was swallowed whole by the darkness and the white around him disappeared, the next few moments were a blank spot in his memory. However next he awakened, he still felt something against his back as, if he had remained still, he knew better that he had not. Yet another test to endure, alone or together with the others?

His questions soon found answers as he raised his eyelids, gazing at Kendath embracing Merrin in his arms, an eerie flashback shot trough Garthag`s mind of his sister. However Merrin was not bloody, torn up or insane, rather blessed and fortunate, the exact opposite. That made him wonder whether it was simply upon the gods whims, that they allowed Merrin to have such power in the world and survive a number of ordeals as where Liliane perished in one. Or was it just by chance, that the fate of men came to pass as such, if there was no one to bend them? Honestly, he had no clue, but he was curious to find out what these gods had truly in mind. Did they just care for a few and leave the rest to rot? Garthag grinned physically as he stumbled up and gazed around at the place they had been brought to, barren and desolate. No matter, they would overcome this as well yet he could not help, but wonder at what price. He doubted the experience would scare or scar the rest too deeply, but he feared that he had come to question his own acts thus far. He pushed the thoughts aside and lazily gazed at Merrin, who inquired of their next course of action or more likely pondered out loud what everyone else was thinking.

Had anyone stared back at Garthag they would have noticed, that the sharpness and coldness had disappeared from his eyes. They were now dull and neutral, he didn`t put even try to put in an effort to look as, if he tried to peer into their souls. They might think he was simply tired, but in his own mind he knew better than that, he was lost and confused. Garthag quietly gazed at their surroundings and stopped to stare away from the others, pondering.

Was going trough all this really worth it? And had he even the right reasons to partake in these tests or the journey as a whole, should he even be there? No, was the first answer, that came to mind. He was an uninvited guest, an unwanted factor in this whole game, which seemed to be bending the balance in the world. The gods, the renegades, Merrin and Kendath in the middle of this maelstrom, the meiltha and the shadowers, but where was his place? Seeking power? He had hardly gained any and the farther he had come, the more hollow his reasons seemed to become in his eyes as the effort put into this journey grew. He shook his head quietly before turning to gaze at the rest with a rather unenthusiastic stare, which didn`t tell much.

He didn`t hate these events or did he like them, simply put it all felt inconsequential to him at the moment.

_________________

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!

His cheek stung where Merrin had touched it, and Kendath subconsciously raised a hand as though to brush it off. Shaking his head, he caught a flurry of robes in the corner of his eye. He tried not to look, but something about the Garthag's stance piqued his curiosity. The just perceptible slump of the mage's shoulders, the odd deadpan on his face, devoid of sneer or arrogance... What was it about their last trial that had fazed even Garthag? He tried not to think about it, tried to block it out as he squinted into the flat horizon.

He did a double take and squinted harder.

The creature was slithering... or crawling... toward them. Dark and misshapen, it inched closer, the grate of its scales against the ground sending shivers down Kendath's spine. Appearing small at first, with nothing to compare its size with, it grew at an alarming rate as it neared, until he estimated it to easily surpass fifty - no, a hundred - feet. Its tail thrashed once, shaking the cracked earth, and on its tip Kendath caught the gleam of spikes. Something unfurled from its back - a single tattered, membranous wing. The other one had been ripped completely off its body.

The dragon collapsed ten paces away, its scales gray in the monochrome twilight. It blinked a yellow eye at them, released a final moan that echoed across the desolation, and died.

For a few hammering heartbeats, Kendath could only stand and gape. Then he was stumbling toward it, arm outstretched toward its nostrils, each larger than the size of his hand. No steaming exhalation sizzled against his skin. Numb, he stroked its already cooling snout. His fingers traced the missing scales, the scarlet gashes in the soft flesh beneath. An image of Demon and then Gyre flitted through his mind. The empathy struck him like a blow in the chest. It lasted no longer than a second, but in that single second, he was no longer Kendath but a simple dragonrider - any dragonrider, five thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, or now - experiencing the loss as the giant heart stopped, as the magnificent frame slumped, never again to ride the wind. Swallowing, he returned his hand to his side and forced himself to step back.

A raucous caw from above jerked his gaze upward. The vultures were already circling overhead. They formed no shadows on the ground, and he would never have noticed them if not for the cacophony of their screeches. More and more were joining them every moment until their forms darkened the skies, a single storm cloud in the vast expanse. Their shrills amplified. One of them, thirsty for blood, dipped into a dive, curved talons extended for the soft gap on the dragon's neck.

Kendath didn't think. A rapid three-step and a lunge brought him right underneath the diving bird. His falchion punched the air, and the vulture plummeted down, screaming, in a spray of feathers and blood. More of them were diving now. He pivoted and nicked the wing of one, but it swerved out of the way and landed on the dragon's ridged back, where it cawed in triumph and began to feed. It was then, watching the skies grow black with a hundred more vultures, that Kendath appreciated the enormity of the scaled carcass.

Breath catching in his throat, he turned to Merrin. "Do Renegade dragons grow this large?"

_________________

Merrin shook her head mutely. She hadn't moved to draw her saber and only stood to watch the vultures circle like a vile black wind, her expression bleak. So much death. So much. "No," she said, dropping her eyes. "She couldn't look at the gigantic carcass, couldn't endure the reminder of what she, too, had lost. What was the point of caring? None of it was real, none of it mattered. Yet the dead dragon tugged painfully on her heartstrings, made her remember once again...

One of the carrion-hungry birds made an ungainly flap and alit at her feet, waddling toward the promise of food. The dragon's lackluster scales glinted dully and Merrin saw silver. Numbly, she lashed out at the bird, but its dying squawk only mingled with the cries of myriad others as they swooped in, talons and beaks ravenous. Sickened by the sight, she turned away.

Dull horizon met her eyes in every direction, empty wasteland inhabited solely by the four of them...and the dragon. And the dragon.

It didn't matter. None of it did. Even Merrin didn't know why she turned, beating at the descending vultures with her hands, with her saber. Maybe it did matter. Maybe it did.

_________________