Brethren - Chapters 1 - 3

Brethren - Chapter 1

Darkness and silence. Balael Arteminas opened his eyes to find himself in the middle of a vast orange plain. Before him the expanse stretched on into a red haze, deeper than blood. A dry, biting wind assailed his face, stinging his eyes. Looking down, he found himself clad in full armour, dulled by the dusty air and sapping light. A strong warhorse bore him aloft its steady back, awaiting his command. He kicked the animal lightly in one side, and it turned to its rear with no further duress. At what had been his back there stood arrayed a great Warhost, some seven thousand strong, and the sounds of an army prepared for bloodshed suddenly made themselves known.

         A great resounding roar tore its way from Balael’s throat, and the ground shook with the sound of a devoted legion echoing their general’s war cry. He found himself speaking in the harsh and imperious tones of one whose words could mean the difference between life and loss.

         “Hear me warriors of greatest Dasca, for these are the words you will carry with you to the slaughter! Before you marches fellness itself, and it is with the strength of steel and the light of honour that such black….”

         He knew the words before they left his lips. He knew the place. He knew the battle. He knew the dream, for it was one that often played upon his mind in the dark hours. But he would gladly play the part; gladly relive the glory of one of so many days of bloodshed. Balael Arteminas dreamt only of war, and it soothed his soul in times of peace.

         He knew what awaited him when he turned back to face the haze of blood, but still it filled his heart with the clamorous beating of battle, and his veins with the broiling nectar of a wrathful God.

         Seemingly from the air itself there emerged in the distance a black wall of snarling enmity, a brooding, charged front line, seething with violent intent. The demon horde fell upon the remaining distance with terrifying speed, sinewy limbs propelling fang and claw and hateful eye.

         Balael reached behind him and grasped tight the cold hilt of his blade. This was what he had lived for back then, the feel of crafted steel in his palm, the chorus of battle and the speed of the charge. He was older now, and a serenity had been instilled in him in his waking hours by seven years of peace. The sounds of battle were nevertheless slow to fade in his ears, and it was in his dreams that the warrior within fought on relentlessly, an echo of the past that would never rest, and would never wish to.

         The clawing wind carried the snarls of the advancing demons to Balael’s ears as though with purpose to enrage him. His warhorse began to grow unsettled, but remained in its place. The general let the anger wash over him, enter in to him and affect him profoundly, inside and out. His muscles grew tense, his eyes wide and his teeth clenched. Deep within his armoured chest a younger heart than the one he now possessed began to pulsate more vigorously, preparing for the limits it would soon be pushed to.

Balael raised his blade high above his head, and in a slow, fluid and purposeful arc lowered the blade forward until its still gleaming edge announced the charge. He always found the moment just before the blade edge became fully horizontal an immense thrill. The power surge of command was never more completely realised than at that moment, when the lives of thousands were held in the unknown by decree of the smallest movement.

The surge of movement behind him was immense. The sound of hooves was deafening, and as Balael’s own mount shot forward, he felt as though he rode upon the crest of a gargantuan wave, both empowered by it and at its mercy. For Balael this was always the sensation of leading a charge.

As the two surging masses neared one another, Balael recalled what happened next. He would pick out the hulking mass of the fell Warlord in command of the demon horde, bedecked in dark bronze, a cruel wreath of skulls about his neck. He would raise his sword in challenge, and their paths would lock, the demon lord breaking free from the pack to meet him head on before the clashing of the front lines. There, like bolts of lightning from duelling storms the two would bring steel together, announced by golden sparks and the piercing wail of sword upon sword.
They would circle, Balael weeping red from his shoulder and the demon less an eye. Again they would clash, this time without speed to protect them, and the sound of the demon’s head falling to the dusty earth would be utterly lost in the thunderous cacophony of battle that would erupt as the two armies collided.

But something was wrong.

         Balael could see the demonic general, just as he had before. Still there was something amiss, something in the way in the way he moved.

         His line was different; he had veered slightly to the right, off target. Balael felt a sharp chill move up his spine. This was wrong.

         Shaken by the sudden change in narrative, Balael began to slowly correct his line, directing his horse to intercept. He raised his sword in challenge, just as he had done so many times before. Still the warlord curved away from him, his angle growing sharper, his speed increasing as he spurred his dark steed onward. Balael drove his heels hard into the solid flanks of his own mount, felt the sting of dust and sand as his horse exerted its full power upon the ground. As the two generals paths grew closer, Balael roared words of challenge at his enemy.

         “Fight me, fiend! Bring your sword against mine!”

         The warlord ignored his cries, seemingly fixated on the path ahead.

         “Fight me!!” Balael bellowed, incensed by the strange actions of his opponent.
It was then that the demon turned his head, slowly and with menace, casting foul yellowed eyes upon Balael as he rode. There was something knowing in those eyes, some dark and secret intent that made Balael’s blood turn to ice. As the demon’s gaze returned to the front, Balael followed their line, and the site that met him tore his soul from his body and wet his cheeks with wind-beaten tears.

Two figures stood upon the bright earth, dressed in calming blues. One was a woman, slim and striking, pale skinned and black of hair. At her feet played a small child, a girl of no more than three years. There they stood, oblivious to the threat around them, eyes and ears in another place, another time. A time Balael knew, in which he slept and dreamed, lived and breathed. Balael wept to see his family here, in so dark a place, though it was day. At that moment the general in him fell back, and the father and the husband came forth to fight alone, scared as they were. A new anger took hold, one born of fear, of a life unravelling before his eyes. Why were they here? For twenty years Balael had dreamt of nothing but bloodshed, but only now did he feel truly in danger, truly at the point of a sword.

Now that sword was held in the hand of a dead general, a demon whose goal seemed not to kill him, but to destroy him utterly, to nullify his very being. The armies had gone, vanished into the dust and glare of their own advance; only he remained.

Time seemed to have slowed for Balael, but for his enemy it had quickened, until the latter seemed a sickening blur of darkness and death. He felt powerless, weak and frail, old. Why was this happening? What had changed? He needed to wake up; it was too much for him to bear, even in dream.

Suddenly, the demon was upon them, sword raised high in the shimmering air.
“No!!” screamed Balael, his voice hoarse, his eyes red.

The sword began to descend, but again it was Balael at whom the demon cast its wicked gaze. It burned his heart, to see such unstoppable malice, such joyful hatred, such relish in so dark a deed. What was this for? Why only now, after all these years, did his dreams reflect the fear he held in his heart for his family’s safety?

The blade scythed through the air. Time had slowed once more, as though forcing him to experience every painful detail. Perhaps he had died as he slept, and this was his punishment for a life of bloodshed. Perhaps this was what being a spirit was like. Or perhaps….

His wife turned around, suddenly aware of the peril that loomed before her. His daughter looked up, eyes filling with tears, hands grasping at her mother’s legs.
Perhaps….

Balael wept bitterly, mind struggling, grasping at the realization.
Perhaps….          

He fell to his knees.
A warning?          

         Cruel steel carved through flesh and bo….

Chapter 2

Balael awoke with the scream of a man who had died and been resurrected in the same breath. His bedchamber loomed around him, cold and dark, suddenly a place of threat. His eyes darted around the large room, taking in every detail, every shape and shadow of morning. He was soaked with sweat, and an old scar beneath his right eye stung with fresh tears.

         Elenna, his wife, was not at his side. At once the most painful nightmare of his life returned to him like a flood, threatening to drown him in fear. He flew from his bed and bolted down the curving stone steps to the rest of his home. The main chamber opened cavernously before him, beautiful in the morning light, but silent as death.
There was no one there, and so with haste he ran to the first of a row of arched windows to view the main balcony. Far beneath him the city of Aramondria sprawled colossal, stretching out far into the distance, a great expanse of rich golds and reds. Normally, the morning cast so fair a light upon the city that its architecture appeared to Balael to take on a life of its own, the mineral rich rock of its ever reaching towers and mammoth halls serving to imbue the entire scene with a soft and shifting glow. Now however, the endless city sprawl filled him with a momentary dread, a myriad of horrible possibilities, and a whole world into which gaping maw his family could so easily have been swallowed.

         His heart gladly dispelled such thoughts into the ether of memory as he looked down to the balcony. There, playing with a small wooden horse he had made for her, sat little Yena, his gem of innocence, his only child. All sparkling eyes and ringlets, she walked the horse back and fore, its path continuing unheeded in her young mind.

         Balael felt the fear seeping away from him into the morning haze. His heart began to slow, his breathing steadying. So engrossed was he in sudden relief that he failed to notice that she was alone. She looked so pure, so safe in the warming light.

As he ran towards the door leading down, his foot caught something laid across the floor, and he fell hard to the ground. As he recomposed himself, he looked down to see what had tripped him, and for the second time that day he was gripped, hard and without warning, with the deepest of terrors.

There on the floor lay Dashia, his house’s serving girl, clothes soaked incarnadine, unmoving.

Balael had seen more corpses in his life than could be counted, many of them made so by his own hand. For what it might mean for his family though, this seemed to him by far the most morbid, the most coldly and sickeningly cadaverous. He wretched, feeling the fear return with new and violent strength, pounding at his gut. At once the lifeless form at his feet became that of his daughter in his mind’s eye; her body, her blood, her face. It took every vestige of strength, every battle earned ounce of warrior’s will to bring him to his feet, to return his eyes to the window, to look down to the balcony once more.

Yena continued to play, unaware of the grizzly fate of her beloved nanny. At that moment she looked curiously across to the far side of the balcony, out of Balael’s view, and her eyes widened. Balael moved to the next window along to see what had so fixated her.

A tall man approached her purposefully, dressed in black, a smooth mask covering his face. As soon as he saw him, Balael knew that he would kill him. Even if his daughter escaped unharmed, letting him live seemed unthinkable. The father within him burned with rage, a rage over which the general in him, the strategist, held no command. As Balael sprinted to the door leading down to the balcony, he made sure not to shout out, not to warn the intruder of his presence. He knew he could get there in time, for it was the father driving him forward, charging him with whatever impetus was needed to bring him to his child.

Balael crashed through the door without opening it, snapping it clean off its hinges. As splinters of wood peppered the steps and balcony below, the man in black looked up.  For a moment he halted his advance, fingertips playing nervously with the hilt of a long silver dagger at his belt. Balael roared his warning unto the very Walls of the World, his fear evaporated, the general once more at the forefront. His voice was like a gathering storm.

“One step nearer that child will be the end of you stranger.” His eyes bulged, bloodshot and full of threat.

The hand of the masked intruder began to shake violently. He looked at Balael, then at Yena, then back to Balael. Balael was roughly the same distance from his daughter as the intruder, and Balael that knew he was thinking the same thing. He would sprint for her and use her as shield against him, use her to escape with his life. Sure enough, as though at the crack of his masters whip, the man in black made his move, leaping forwards toward Yena at full speed. Balael descended the stairs in one movement, hitting the ground at a run. Yena beamed at the sight of her father, and the wooden horse fell to the floor as she reached out for him.

The man in black was fast, but Balael was faster, and as the two men grew quickly nearer, it became apparent that he would reach his daughter first. Appearing to sense this, the man in black drew his dagger, and as he came within jumping distance of the child he leaped forward, dagger first, its cruel point aimed squarely at her tiny frame. Balael drew in a sharp breath at the sight of his daughter in such mortal danger, his powerful legs pounding the stone beneath them with all their might. Why would he attack with the dagger? If he killed her, that would be the end of him, his one chance of survival gone. He had to know that.

Balael’s confusion was quickly overtaken by adrenaline, and a final searing burst of speed brought him within inches of the assailant. As the two men collided almost above her, Yena looked up at them, laughing her tinny little laugh, as though it was all some boisterous game.

Balael struck the man hard in the ribs with his shoulder, ducking low and rising up at the last moment before contact. Several loud cracks announced the thunderous blow. The man, tall but slight, was flung several feet through the air. Balael had lost his footing upon striking him and fallen to the floor with a roll. He looked up again just in time to see the morning light flash upon a silver buckle as the masked attacker struck the balcony, his speed propelling him over it into the crisp, boundless air beyond.

For a moment Balael stood in silence, rooted to the spot, his mind allowing his body a moment’s respite. Yena was too young by far to understand the reality of what had happened. Nevertheless, the sight of the man in black disappearing silently over the edge, and the look on her fathers face was enough to strike a chord of empathy in her young heart. She began to cry uncontrollably, and it was this sound that awoke Balael from his reverie.

Not allowing himself a moment more to dwell upon the scene that was surely beginning to unravel below, he swept his daughter up into his arms and hugged her tight. Relief enveloped him, like the silken wings of an angel, and he wept openly. Sensing her father’s fragility, Yena cried all the harder, until her dress was stained with tears both young and old. Balael held her out in front of him and looked into her welling eyes; saw her innocence, her potential. At that moment, for one of very few in his life, he felt a deep and honest gratitude, and he smiled. Yena stopped crying in an instant, and smiled back. Her eyes had always been his, a dark and misty blue, but her smile; that had always been her mothers.
Her mother.

And it all fell apart. At the flash of a smile, the fear was reborn, stronger for its absence, darker for its returning to a brighter mind. Somewhere far below, a woman screamed.

*    *    *

From some lofty and secret place, a dark figure cast darker eyes to the winding streets below. A crowd had gathered around the corpse like red eyed rats, eager for blood. Those shadowy eyes had watched him fall, watched him die without blinking. Blinking was a waste of sight, especially when there was something to be seen.
Behind those eyes, a cold mind fell painfully short of compassion. Long, pale fingers clutched something, something bright and precious. The figure slowly turned, and whispered quietly to the shadows.
“All for you.”

*    *    *


A cold wind crept across the balcony. Setting his daughter down, Balael knelt to the floor on weakened knees. He spoke to her loudly and with urgency.

“Yena, where is your mother?”

Yena stared silently up at him, her lip beginning to quiver. Balael raised his voice slightly, trying hard not to scare her.

“Yena, you must tell me where your mother is. Where is she?”

Though she knew the words full well, her father’s cold expression was not one she had seen before. It scared her, and she didn’t understand.

Seeing the fear in his daughter’s eyes, Balael knelt closer, and gathering every ounce of paternal strength to the surface, he managed a smile.

“Mother” he said slowly, in brighter tones than he had thought himself capable.

Yena’s face warmed, and after a moments thought, she managed a reply.

“Flowers” she said proudly, expecting praise from her father. Instead, she was swept up once more and carried quickly out of the morning light and into the house. Balael held his daughter tight to his chest as he raced to the bedchamber, where this had all begun in darkness and dream just minutes before. Setting her down on the edge of the bed, he began to frantically rummage through an old jewellery box. At length, he produced an intricate marble key, the four swords insignia of the Arteminas household engraved upon its head. Racing to the other side of the room he inserted the key into a large plated chest, which open with a series of loud clicks. He removed something long and wrapped in silks from the bottom of the chest, and lying it down beside him beckoned Yena come to his side. She looked at him with glassy eyes, and he smiled and held her tiny hands in his.

“Yena, we’re going to play a game. I’m going to go and find your mother, and then we’re going to play hide and seek.”

She beamed.

“I think the best place for you to hide would be this big old chest, but you’d have to be really really quiet. Do you think you can do that?”

She nodded vigorously, her fears forgotten.

“Now you get on in, and when I bring your mother up to look for you, you’re not going to make a sound are you?”

She shook her head and almost jumped in to the chest. Balael gave her his biggest smile as he kissed her on the forehead and began to shut the chest.

“I love you” he whispered as the top came down, and Yena giggled to herself.
As soon as he had turned the key and locked his daughter safely away, Balael’s face turned to stone. He turned to the item he had removed and began to unwrap it from its silken sheath. Feeling the cold steel of the blade’s hilt on his palms imbued him with strength, and as he left his daughter alone in the chamber, he felt sure he would return to her.

Chapter 3

The general considered his options. He had always been a believer in the strength of intuition, and in the potent predictive power of dream. This was not the first time a threat to his own or others safety had become apparent to him while he slept. More than once during battle, an image or sensation brought to him in dream had proved of strategic value the following day. Both Yena and Elenna had been under threat in that torturous vision, and there was no reason to believe that the masked attacker from the balcony was alone. It was unlikely that he had entered without at least another body behind him. For the moment, the looming question of why his home had been attacked in the first place would have to wait.

“Flowers” had meant the garden that Elenna kept religiously upon the roof of their home. When they had met, she had lived in a tiny village in the steppes of Athdarien, far to the north of the city. A captain in those days, Balael’s legion had passed through on its way to fight in the now legendary Pinnacle Wars, and had made camp nearby. Elenna had tended many beautiful gardens in and around the village. She had made it her duty to award each and every soldier in the legion, over a thousand men, a white minnagen flower for their bravery, and to carry with them for luck in battle.

The night before they were due to move out, she came to the men and gave them their flowers, each presented individually and with the words: “For your life, and with luck” It was then that they had met, and had shared a fleeting kiss in the darkness. When Balael returned four years later he was a hero. Rather than march to Aramondria to be honoured though, he came straight back to her village and asked her to marry him, giving back to her the flower he had kept at his breast throughout the bloodshed.

That lone and peaceful flower sat framed above the mantle in their home, a constant reminder of the gesture of goodwill between strangers that had brought them together. Elenna had never lost her love of things that grow, and at times it pained her to live so far above the ground, above the soil of The Plain. Knowing this, Balael had arranged for a garden to be included in the design of their house, and had used his renown to bring the best architects in the city into his employ for its creation.
The flowers so intricately engraved upon the stone steps made little impression upon him as he stalked upwards.
He emerged from the staircase amid a lush and textured harmony of colours. Before him lay a precision crafted work of stonecutting and floral artistry. One line of colour ran seamlessly into another, over and over again, as an underlying theme of death and rebirth ran its course through the garden. A small circular wall ran the circumference of the roof for Yena’s safety, itself meticulously engraved with scenes from the turbulent history of the Caleduan people. The garden’s glorious centrepiece stood at the far end, facing the centre of The Plain and The Evermount itself. A great marble statue of Signius, the Angel of earth and growth, stood masterfully upon a tiered pedestal, each step lined with bright blue flowers. The position of the head and arms, as well his expression, indicated both a profound sadness and a colossal strength of resolve; the eyes looked hopefully southwards to Endym, the realm of the Gods.

Balael’s eyes leaped place to place, frantically scanning for any signs of life. There were places to hide, he knew, and so with a cautious haste he proceded forward, head moving mechanically from side to side, keeping his flanks guarded. Though he could not see anyone, he felt something amid the scent of flowers and the chill of morning, a presence that did not belong. There was fear in the air, and it was not his own.

As he reached the centre of the garden, he was aware that he had uncovered enough within his line of sight to rule out all but one of the possible places of concealment. He turned his eyes to the statue. As he moved forward slowly through the flowers, he felt something soft catch his foot. His hand involuntarily gripped harder the hilt of his blade as the image of Dashia’s lifeless body flashed momentarily before his bloodshot eyes. Keeping his gaze locked firmly on the statue, he knelt slowly and felt through the cool stems with his free hand. He felt material, and rising took the shortest of glances at what he had found: a black mask, identical to that of the first attacker, revealing of only the eyes of its absent bearer.

He quickly processed the find. Elenna must surely have torn the mask from its bearer’s face in the struggle. She had always been strong, both of will and of arm. If the dream had warned of a nigh impending threat, as with the first attacker, then it was possible that his own arrival in the garden had in fact interrupted the second assault. His identity revealed, the unmasked assailant could have heard Balael ascending the steps to the roof and quickly hidden himself and his quarry behind the statue.

As if in submission to his deductions, the surrounding flowers, and indeed those leading up to the statue, were bent and broken, trampled in haste. As his eyes followed the line of crushed plants to the statue, his fist clenched about the mask in anger. This was to be a place of peace, of serenity and harmony amid the chaos of life. By entering into it with such vile intent, the assailant seemed to have opened a window to the outside, to the evils and vices of the world beyond the garden. To Balael, what had been so beautiful a place now reeked of hatred, tangible and heavy in the scented air. He had waited long enough for the intruder to make his move.

“Show yourself!” he bellowed towards the statue.

There was a sharp intake of breath, and not his wife’s. Fear abounded in the crisp breeze.

“You will return my wife to me, or die by my sword. This I promise you.” Balael expounded the ultimatum in his most imperious tones.

There was a shuffling of feet, and a muffled cry. The cry was hers.

She was alive.

Relief swamped Balael’s consciousness once more, but he remained stoic, motionless and unyielding as the statue itself.

“This is my final warning, stra-“

He was cut off mid sentence by the harrowing sight of his wife slowly emerging, cheeks tear-stained, a black gauntleted hand around her pale throat. Her mouth was open, trying to speak, to shout, to scream, but the vice-like grip of her captor choked all sound into submission. Her striking eyes fixed upon Balael’s. There was fear there of course, a flood of it, but also there was trust; a staunch belief in her husband, in his strength and in the relentless passion of his love.

He bit his tongue at the sight of her, struggling to remain in control. Furious anger, love, and terror all at once rained down, seeping into him, assaulting his mind from every side. He felt like a puppet at the hands of some cruel entertainer, held at bay with ghostly strings, enacting some tragic scene for an audience of weeping flowers. He tried to speak, but his throat felt as though it too was gripped hard by some pitiless hand.

“Rele-” he choked, tasting blood in his mouth. “Release her.” He had intended it to sound threatening, dominant and absolute, but it came out suffocated, pleading and weak. For too long there was silence, nothing to be heard but the breeze and the clutching gasps of his wife. At length a sound could be heard, a low, repetitive hum, constant and monotonous. There were words buried within the layers of sound, but Balael could not make them out. Still the rhythm was familiar to him, something long ingrained, forgotten. It became louder and more deliberate, agitated and spoken through clenched teeth.

“Fall….power…. peace….blood….eternal” Odd words floated on the wind, disjointed.

Then one came that awoke Balael’s sleeping memories.

“Forgive.”

A prayer. The Prayer of Absolution, of absolute and complete forgiveness from Nevarrius, the angel of the wind and skies and the progenitor of the Caleduan people. He was preparing himself for some sinful act, and his rising tones announced its imminence. Elenna began to struggle harder, nails scraping futilely at the armoured hand about her neck. She could hear him, sense the tension rising in the firmness of his grip. Her eyes were wild now, darting in all direction, rolling back in her head as she struggled to remain conscious.

Balael’s body primed itself for speed, igniting the blood of every muscle for the order to attack. Just short of unleashing himself, he screamed in passionate entreaty.
“Please!! Please stop this madness!! You will not have your forgiveness!! You will join the red souls, I swear it!! I beg of you, save your soul and hers; release her!!”

         An answer came from between tortured breaths and voiced by a man profoundly and sorrowfully resigned to his fate.

         “This….is what must be!! It is the path we were born to take!!”
He wept loudly.

         There was a conviction in his voice that spurred Balael to action. This was a matter of faith, and it would not be solved with words or an appeal to reason.

         In a second he had covered a quarter of the ground to the statue, tearing flowers from their roots as he went.

         “Do not think me a demon, general” the voice pleaded. The glint of a silver dagger hung in the air, snaking along its curved source as it emerged from behind the swirling marble.

Balael could not even hear his own scream as he ran. A low growl began to emanate from behind the statue, increasing in intensity until it was itself a scream, the scream of a broken man with a tested faith. Though he was half way there now, it seemed to Balael as though an ocean of mocking colours separated him from his love. He would never reach her in time, not in body. He drew his blade back like an archer tensing his string; muscles taught, hand as one with the metal of its hilt. Still he ran, propelled by the sight of her.

His focus was absolute, the world around him crystallized until his task was done. All there was now was himself and the statue. Calling at once upon every atom in his body, he poured every thread and flow of physical energy into his blade-arm, infusing it with his full and considerable power. In his mind’s eye he saw the line, knew that he had to be absolute in his aim.

He released, his every sinew re-aligning as both feet left the ground, his arm snapping forward, propelling the blade full force at its target. As it span whirlwind-like through the morning air, the silver dagger grazed the soft skin of Elenna’s neck. As Balael’s feet found the floor once more, his eyes caught a spot of red at her throat. He found himself still in full sprint, his fingers outstretched to her as her eyes fixed once more upon his own. Love in its truest and most honest form flew between them in that moment.

“I am sorry” said the voice, with a sincerity that was lost upon Balael as he ran.
The great broadsword carved through the hard rock of the statue as though it were merely an extension of the flesh of its target. The sound of cracking stone was contrasted a moment later with that of the puncturing of flesh, and the gargled death-scream of the man in black.

Balael however, heard something different.

He heard the sound of birds that first morning after they had made love.

He heard the sound of the grass in the wind when he had asked her to marry him.

He heard the sound of her voice in sweet song the day he had met her, as her hair had glistened with the first lone drops of rain.

He heard her body as it fell lifeless into his arms.

Her eyes stared up him, grey and clouded.

Blood soaked his hands.

Everything that he was and had ever been was at that moment taken from him, ripped from his very being with violent and matchless strength. He felt as though an abyss had opened within him, and that it now drew everything else into it; happiness, sadness, life and even death. He felt as though he had surpassed death, that his soul itself had been obliterated, that nothing remained of him. His eyes began to lose focus; he fell to his knees and gasped for air. He lay his love sweetly down upon the stones and clutched at his throat, struggling hard for every breath. Shadows encroached upon the edges of his vision, and he felt weak.

As he fell to his hands, the last vestiges of consciousness slipping away from him, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the man in black, slumped inanimately upon the great sword that jutted forth from the cold marble before him. For a moment the face stirred in him some memory; but it was too dark now, and as he slipped silently from the waking world, his last cognisant thought was of little Yena, small, alone and in shadow.

Darkness and silence.