Battle of Stillsea Coast

Prologue
They lumber forward in the darkness. Giant, hulking beasts, each step shattering trees underfoot, the whole herd together generating a rumble in the earth that can be felt for miles, though in the black forests of the realm of shadow even sounds as great as this were dampened to near inaudibility mere tens of yards from the creatures.

It would have been mistaken to ask where they were going, as much as it would be to ask a cloud the same thing, for neither cloud nor beast possesses such things as purpose, intent, or intelligence. All beast or cloud had in their procession was direction, with the beasts also possessing the additional attribute of hunger.

First amongst the creatures is one known as Da Boss to those few who knew who he was and were capable of such advanced concepts as names. Da Boss himself was not one such, his sheer size as well as his profoundly thick-headed ignorance being his main qualifications for leadership, though, like all those who became troggoth bosses, it was really a natural aura of indefinable charisma that had attracted the others to walk in his path. Da Boss was nothing short of a giant, even to the already formidable proportions of a dankhold troggoth. It is the nature of this species to grow or shrink to fit the size of the cavern in which it hibernates, but centuries ago, confused by the impenetrable blackness of the particular part of Ulgu he found himself in, he had fallen asleep in an open field, his body expanding towards the ceiling of distant sky unhindered until the magic of the rocks and fungus around him had been so thoroughly exhausted that plant life was killed for miles around and the stone where he lay had lost its stone-ness, turning to a thin jelly. With the magic of the area expended, a deep hunger aroused Da Boss, though how long ago it had been since his most recent awakening was unfathomably beyond his meager understanding.

Second amongst the creatures, though only through his own self-declaration, was one who called himself Big'un. He was the only one who called the first Da Boss, as he was the only one in the group with the wit for any manner of speech or language, albeit in thick, halting tones and with limited vocabulary and less grammar. Big'un was often given to making what he considered grandiose pronouncements, but his companions lacked any comprehension of what he was saying and largely ignored him.

Big'un was the odd one of the group in more ways than one. The tallest, though not the broadest, and with a head of thin, scraggly hair that hung down past his waist, Big'un was the only one of the herd who could be mistaken for human. A ruddy, inbred, and generally foul human to be sure, and the one doing the mistaking would have to be miles and miles away to miss the sheer scale of the gargant, but any observer could see that the giant was unmistakably different from his bestial troggoth companions. Big'un himself was too stupid to be aware of the species difference, and the other troggs in the herd generally paid him no mind.

Indeed, they paid no mind to anything. To the eyes of a hungry giant who bestrode the realm with long, lazy strides, the world was a simple place. There was food, which would only be noticed when hungry. There were things too big to step over, like Big'un, which would be walked around, or else they would be walked into and only when the object failed to yield would the trog remember to walk around it. There were things that were not food and were not large enough to block the way, which would typically go wholly unnoticed. And there was the glowing light of the Bad Moon radiating from the bestial charisma of the largest dankhold troggoth which led them forward in their march.

A size down from the boss, and two sizes down from the gargant, were the seven rockgut troggoths that had been recently attracted to Da Boss's glow as he had passed through the mountains of the shadowed region. There was no reason that they followed this light, reasons being things for a different class of creature. All that could be said was that they did follow him as the herd proceeded forward along an unerringly straight path that had neither origin nor destination, only forward and not forward.

Another size down from them, failing even to crest the tree tops, were Da Boss's oldest followers, though even these he had only a limited awareness of. It had been shortly after he had awoken that Da Boss's path took him through a shadowed swamp the size of a large nation where five Nurgle-touched fellwater troggoths had fallen into the charisma that neither he nor they knew he possessed. One had died some time ago, though the death had gone as unnoticed and unremembered as the existance of the surviving four.

The last and least of the beasts were a dozen dozens of squigs who bounced underfoot, bouncing and colliding with legs and terrain and somehow managing to avoid being squished, except the ones who did get squished. As is there way, the squigs were a constant source of motion providing a visual contrast to the ponderous march of the towering monsters. That is, had the entire tableau been visible, or had there been any spectators so deep in the magically shadowed, ill-fated woods.

The herd moved forward. They could just as easily have stood still, though the charismatic compulsion of Da Boss kept their feet churning the earth beneath them. Forward and stopped were actions well within a troggoth's capabilities. Turning, going backwards, focusing on anything but the food directly in front of it, these may as well have been celestial magicks for all they were concerned.

And so forward they went through the impenetrable black.

CHAPTER 1
Dirk Verstab lit a candle in the gloom. His wife Indea had been upset with him that night, and while he hated to ascribe her displeasure to her monthly rhythm, he couldn't help but be upset by what he saw as the arbitrariness of her complaints.

"I am perfectly mature," he muttered to himself as he opened his workshop for the day, "I work all day and help around the house. I can goof off sometimes, that doesn't make me immature."

His muttering continued as he inspected the fishing reeds he had left overnight to cure in the strengthen solution. He peered closely, bringing the lamp closer to the flammable solution that he should have. It was earlier than he usually opened the workshop, what would in some other town be called pre-dawn. In this part of Ulgu, realm of shadows, the sun never rose, and Dirk had never in his life seen a dawn, but it would be getting less dark soon, the twelve hours of dim better for working than the twelve hours of dark in Malibog-bayan took the place of day and night. He wasn't sure if the cure on the rods had set or not, even with the candle light, but decided to take them out of the barrel anyway, since he had no other commissions at the moment.

Dirk was the village reedsman, crafting the fishing gear that the small coastal village relied on, but increasingly he had been using the bamboo shoots his daughter Maily harvested from the patch in the north for more general purpose carpentry. The tree wood harvested to the south of the village was increasingly affected by the Black that stole over the forest, and now only boats were built and repaired of lumber. This made Dirk's slow days all the more rare and important to enjoy, though it seemed he would have to make sure his enjoyment didn't make it to Indea's ears for a while. With that last thought, his mood again matched the gloom that hung perpetually over Malibog-bayan.

The reeds held as he drilled his pilot holes, and there was nearly as much faint illumination coming in from the shop window as there was emitting from the feeble candle in his lamp by the time he had fixed the guides and reels in place. Checking his work one more time, he nodded, satisfied that Nak would get good use out of the new rods. By now, Nak would have cast off into the Stillsea to fish for the day, so Dirk put the gear in the merchandise bin out front for Nak to pick up later, and walked into town with the better part of the day left open to him.

Often on days like this, Dirk would go home and help his wife by weaving the strands of bamboo fiber that she used to sew fishing nets, but he was still angry over their fight and petulantly resolved not to help today. Indea just had unrealistic expectations of men, Dirk decided, and would have to learn that there simply wasn't some Stormcast Warrior that was going to ride lightning into her life. Perfect men like that only existed in stories to inspire young boys and excite slightly older girls. If anything, Dirk decided, she was the one being childish, expecting perfection from him.

The gloom had wormed its way deep into his mind today, his disgruntlement blinding him to the direction his feet were taking him. They stopped of their own accord at the town park, an open field around a single statue and shrine of the village deity Ameusume. None in the town were particularly religious, but they had all grown up with the stories of the aspect of and consort to the dark prince of perfection. Dirk snorted at this, here again was a story with another perfect man for women to lust over. The statue was a thing wholly separate from the rest of the town, sublime workmanship carved from a sumptuous marble that reflected and illuminated the small amount of light that penetrated the shadowy gloom, while the rest of the town was really only a single step up from shanties, all made of wood and bamboo, none missing less than a fifth of the clay tiles off the roof. None knew for certain where the statue had come from, though when the non-human Indis the Aelf had taken up residence and complained loudly about the icon, village gossip had decided it must be of aelfen construction.

At one end of the park, some seventy meters east of the statue, lay the flat and unreflective coast of the Stillsea, the only movement upon those dark waters being the small flotilla of fishing boats that had launched to keep the village fed for another day. On the other end stood market stalls that would all open in the evening when the fishermen returned. For now the only figure on that gravel road was Mayor Pouli Garrou, head of the only family of boatwrights in the village and nominal political figurehead for the very few communal activities that occurred in so small a community. The immensely fat woman spotted Dirk at the same time and waddled across the lifeless lawn of the town park to speak with him.

"Yes, Dirk, Yes, I have come all the way here to speak with you. Do you know how far I have walked, Dirk? All around the village, yes I have. I did not see you in your workshop, Dirk, yes I did not. I even went into the back and looked through your things, yes I did. But, Dirk, I have found you now, yes I have, and we must speak Dirk." The wall of sound reverberated across the town park, the only sound that managed to penetrate the dampening effect of the perpetual gloom that hung upon the town. It had long ago ceased to amaze him how she could fit multiple sentences into the space another would take to utter single words. Now it simply irritated. But the most powerful woman in town was simply something that had to be endured, and the less he spoke or allowed himself to appear annoyed, the sooner she would state her business and leave.

"How can I help, Pouli," Dirk asked flatly.

"Yes, it is the festival, Dirk, you know what I mean? The festival is only two weeks away Dirk, did you know that? Yes, it will be properly orgiastic, too, Dirk, under Ameusume's gaze. That is her right there, Dirk, yes, the bringer of sensation into this dreary town." Yes, having lived here all his life Dirk was aware of the major annual festival to the Young God's handmaiden, though pointing that out would do nothing but make the discussion more lengthy. "Anyway, Dirk, it is only two weeks away now and I haven't heard anything from Ang Lungsod. Yes, can you believe it Dirk? My order hasn't arrived yet, you haven't heard anything about it have you? Yes, it should be arriving by carriage Dirk, just like last year. Dirk, do you think anything could have-"

Ang Lungsod was the biggest town nearby, and the only town nearby, though to call it nearby was a stretch. Following the road took two weeks by carriage and three by foot taking one dangerously close to the Shadegate and the realm of death that lay behind it. Any carriage arriving on that road was immediately the biggest news in Malibog-bayan and caused such a commotion that there would be no need to go around asking random craftsmen if they had seen it.

"When did you send the request over?" He asked, interrupting the verbal avalanche.

"Oh, Dirk, I think it has been two and a half weeks now. Yes, I sent it with Rakel when he took the salt fish over. Do you think something happened? Do you know what is going on in Ang Lungsod?" Why would Dirk know? He had been to the big city once, eight years ago, while Rakel was sick, making him one of the few townsmen to have made the journey. But how on earth she expected him to know what was going on was beyond him. And in any case, it was simply impossible for Rakel to have made it back yet if he had only been gone two and a half weeks. But saying that would have done him no good, so Dirk remained stoically diplomatic.

"No, I have not heard anything. I am sure your husband is just fine, Pouli. Was that all you needed?"

"Oh thank you, Dirk, you are such a relief. And yes, there was one other thing Dirk, one more thing you could take care of for me? You are such a dear, Dirk, this village is so lucky to have a talented reedsman like you, yes it is, and to think you have some spare time for me today, yes Dirk, the dark prince himself must have arranged it, yes you will save the festival Dirk, I just know you will. Oh, thank you Dirk, I will need it a few days early to give us plenty of time before the festival. Yes, thank you Dirk, you do so much for the community." She bubbled a bit more before turning to waddle towards her house.

Dirk sighed. He did not want to speak up, he did not want to extend the painful inanity of conversation with Mayor Garrou, but if it was for the festival, he had a duty. "Pouli," he said, his voice flat as the Stillsea and dead as the realm of souls, "What is it you need me to take care of?"

Pouli turned and flicked her head in a gesture that could have been called cute had she been carrying a quarter as much weight on her body, "The. Crowns." She said with exaggerated slowness, "The. Crowns. Silly. For the festival. Yes, the wood we were using has taken the Black, and we weren't sure if it would offend the Dark Prince, but we wouldn't want that, Dirk, oh no, oh no, we would not want that at all, would we Dirk. And so I though, yes, Dirk, it was my idea, I am mayor for a reason you know, anyway, I thought we would just hire our talented and devout reedsman to handle it. And so I proposed it to everyone on the festival committee, and they all agreed, so anyway, we will need you to make forty four festival crowns for the town's virgins, and make sure they are done in-"

"Yes." Dirk interrupted, his irritation showing, "I can make the festival crowns." He considered discussing payment, and then he considered that not having to talk to the irritating woman any further would be payment enough.

"Yes, of course you will, Dirk." And having accomplished her task, she turned and wandered off to go be a busybody somewhere else.

The reedsman sighed. Since he had expected a slow period, he had allowed his daughter to harvest less bamboo than normal, just enough to keep her mother, who was always busy, supplied with fibers. And he would need to see her festival crown from last year to work out how to copy the details of the design in a different medium. He suddenly had quite a lot to do, none of which could be accomplished before his daughter got home.

Dirk felt the weight of the shadowed haze which lay upon the town, and decided to go home and make up with his wife while spending the afternoon weaving fibres.

Maily should have come home early, having been asked to harvest less than normal for her two reed-working parents. But of course, she managed to come home much later than normal.

Dirk and Indea had briefly made half apologies around mid-meal, then each worked in silence for the rest of the day, leaving Dirk to realize that his 14 year old daughter would only be wearing one or two more festival crowns before she no longer needed the ornament that marked out virgins in the ceremony. Likely not even that if that aelf Indis realized how she kept looking at him. Would her crown burn away during the opening ritual? Most youths were smart enough to admit their adulthood, but his daughter was shy enough to put on the crown without saying anything and end up causing a much bigger public scandal as the energies that protected the town lit her very hair on fire with the whole village to witness. The ceremonial fires wouldn't kill her, though more that one new adult had died from the shame afterwards.

Indea wanted Dirk to make a faulty crown for their daughter, having absolutely no faith in her chastity, but Dirk feared the consequences of leaving their child uncrowned under the eye of the Dark Prince. That would be worse than a public shaming. The parents agreed to discuss it when she got home, though as the dim turned to dark other worries began to creep up on them.

Finally, Maily came home, well after dinner had been eaten and cleaned up. She carried no bamboo, thinking instead that the excitement of what she had seen that day was a more precious bundle. She was dearly mistaken as two parents who had both spent the afternoon and then the evening worrying over her made exactingly clear through words and punishments. At the end of it, Maily was to be allowed to attend the festival, her parents worried over the consequences of her absence, but for the weeks until then they would have the village shaman bind her tongue to silence. She was to go to work then come home in the evening, and no more foolishness would be tolerated. Especially not with that aelf, added Dirk.

Maily was sent to her room, it was too late to be bothering the shaman, and her parents took to their own bed shortly after to more properly make up after a day of fighting. Shadow had clouded their hearts from time to time, but there was still love in that small house, and Ameusume's blessing of pleasure in that small bed.

The next morning, or what passed for morning in the perpetually shadowed town, the shaman refused to bind Maily's tongue to silence.

Instead, the moment they walked into the second largest home in the village, decorated heavily with erotic scenes that nearly all the villagers had tried with their lovers at some point but been unable to replicate, the broad-shouldered shaman rose from his chair to his full six foot eight inches of height, his silky smooth, raven black hair hanging down his bare, hard bodied torso. His only article of clothing, aside from six items of sacred jewelry, was a pair of shorts so short as to nearly be a loin cloth, which were a size too large for his waist, since conventionally fitting trousers could not contain the massive package that bulged within.

Indea could not help but stare at him, remembering fondly the times they had copulated, but the radiant icon of lust had eyes only for Maily. "She must stay here, I will bind her tongue to truth once more people have arrived. If the story that spread last night is true, the town will need to convene to discuss it. Can you ring the bell while I prepare?" The shaman directed this last at the two parents. They looked at each other- Indea did not want to leave her husband here either, since Dirk had also known the bliss of the shaman's body, and in unspoken agreement left the house together. They were holding hands as they passed out the doorway, though their steps were quicker than a lover's stroll should be.

They had not let Maily tell her story last night, not wanting to tacitly approve of her behavior, but now they looked at each other, wondering what exactly had kept their daughter out so late, if it hadn't merely been childish rebelliousness.

Dirk rang the bell, and the fishermen along the coast preparing their boats for launch all looked up in curiosity. Seeing Maily's parents, they immediately guessed that the matter was related to the morning's gossip and were the first to assemble outside the shaman's house. Others came in the next minutes, drawn by the ring of the bell or by runners sent to fetch those farther out from the town center. The gloom was light upon the town square that day, and even though most of the eight hundred villagers had gotten word, it was still possible to make out faces distinctly even in the back of the crowd.

The shaman had a porch atop his roof overlooking the square, and stood there in front of Maily, whom he had tied to a chair. It was beneath this perch that the crowd had gathered, the front row of onlookers reserved for the unofficial leaders of the town, which included Dirk as one of the leading craftsmen, and today also Indea, who scowled at anyone who questioned her place at the front today when it was her daughter who had become the center of attention. The shaman's rich, deep voice called for silence, and the sudden quiet of those in the front served as a cue for those in the back who could not hear him to follow suit.

With a sexual voice full of dominant, masculine authority, he spoke to the young girl. "Maily, tell us what you saw, and leave nothing out."

Maily nodded and her mouth began to work, producing tiny squeaks only barely audible to the front row. The shaman shook his head and put his broad, strong hand on her tiny shoulder. "You must be louder, child." he said, but rather than bid her to begin again, he pulled a handful of powder from a box on the floor, pouring it into the bound child's lap. Producing a flint and iron, he struck a smoldering flame in the powder and pushed the back of Maily's head as far down as the bindings would allow. Her breathing quickened in distress, which only served to draw the smoke more rapidly into her nostrils, and when her breathing slowed again, the shaman's firm hand released her. Quickly he tore two strips from his already fabric deprived shorts and, rolling them up, stuffed them in her ears.

Watching the quick ritual, Dirk wondered which of the many, many intoxicants the shaman had just forced upon his daughter, though she soon started speaking in a shockingly loud shout as if she had lost all ability to moderate herself.

"I went to the field that morning," her story began, "But I didn't plan to cut any bamboo. It is ok, because Poppa hasn't got much contracts now and Momma's got enough fibre for a week saved up. I didn't think they'd get so mad, just cause I had one little day to myself. Honest now, I looked at the grove and made sure it was all still good, but plants don't run off nowhere, that's just stories." A few snickers went through the crowd and the shaman spoke in Maily's ear, bringing her back on track.

"But so after I looked at the grove, I didn't want to work anymore, so I went over to Indrarinisellian's field." Dirk's heart clenched. Indis the Aelf. Maily in her childish infatuation had taken the time to learn his full aelfen name, and it bothered her father that she had had enough occasion to practice it that it flowed smoothly off her tongue even while intoxicated. "He was growin' his plants and when I saw him I asked him why he weren't workin' naked. He asked me why he should and the real reason was that I like lookin' at him, but the reason I told him was..." she struggled to say something, "well I lied to him, tellin' him that..." again she faded.

The shaman, quickly realizing that his truth binding would not let her even report the contents of a previously told lie, and that quite a bit of the coming story seemed irrelevant to the main point, guided her story by asking, "When did you go to the shadesgate?"

"Oh, no, sir. We never went to the gate, Indrarinisellian would never let me, even if it was allowed. We just went to Shyish Overlook, must have been after we ate lunch a bit." Dirk chewed his back teeth, wanting the shaman to have her go back and recount just what had happened at that aelf's farm between morning and noon, but stayed silent. "Indrarinisellian likes to commune after lunch, so we were communin' but I usually just fall asleep. He can feel the energies of death and shadow from the overlook, says it hones his... his something. I can't feel it, but I think I can learn if I keep practicing with him. Anyway I wasn't even lookin' at the gate, I was too bored, I wasn't even looking at Indrarinisellian, just sort of staring at a tuft of grass with a bug on it. But then he jumped all of a sudden and whispered somethin' in Aelfish, or I think it was aelfish, I don't know if he has any other tongues but that and common, but then he started pointing at the shield rock at the edge of the cliff face."

"Now I just kept lookin' at his face because it was so pretty with all that angst on it, but then he switched to common tongue and whispered for me to get down under the rock. I got all excited, thought maybe he was gonna let the prince of joys work through us, but when he joined me he didn't feel me up or nothin', just peeked out over that rock."

"Now I waited a bit, cause Samda says boys like to draw it out the first time sometimes, but then I figured I should turn around and peek over the rock, too. And when I looked down the cliff at the grey clearing around the Shadesgate, it was full of dead folks!" Dirk felt a stab of shock in his gut at this revelation, but the muted reaction of the crowd told him that this was the meat of the rumor he had missed out on. Maily, a natural gossip, also felt that her punchline should have gotten more reaction, so she continued her story past what she felt to be the natural ending point, adding details to magnify the drama.

"Yeah, so it was a whole army, and they were all dead. Like, even if I thought maybe it was just a costume or some weird other race, you could tell they were dead. The reason... the reason is that they were all marching out from the Gate!" She paused for a reaction to this added detail, but her crowd seemed restive. This wasn't like gossiping about who was sleeping with whom, and Maily started to wonder if she was out of her element. The intoxicant kept her tongue free, though, and the shaman prodded again, asking her to describe as fully as she could what she saw from the overlook.

"It was a huge army, like right out of a story, hundreds and hundreds of rattlebones, each with a long spear, standin' in perfect blocks, each one completely identical. And when they moved, it was the most amazing thing, because each rattlebones in a block moved completely together," Maily wiggled her shoulders against her bindings as if unconciously attempting to demonstrate how they marched, "every bone leg and every bone arm moved at the same time, like it was really just one of them, but multiplied by a hundred. And as we watched, me and Indrarinisellian, even more blocks of rattlebones came out, each in perfect order. I figure they must have been sexy, handsome soldiers when they were alive, because they were such attractive soldiers in their clean, white bones and shiny bronze helmets. They were naked other than weapon and helmet, but a skeleton don't need much clothes, I guess."

"But what made them look so much better was that they was in perfect rows while all around them these awful, creepy nighthaunts floated in total disorder. They must have been all the people who were bad in life, because they were covered in chains and moldy cloaks and ghostly gross bloody bits, and they didn't have any order, just floating around doing nothing. Some were on horses, but ugly, hungry horses with big chunks that someone had bitten out, and I felt so bad for the poor horses. But the worst part was their faces, and when one looked up and I could see its face clearly it was so awful, but a terrible feeling in my gut and I had to hid behind the rock again and hold Indrarinisellian. He was so brave, he kept looking while I held him and just told me to keep quiet. My poppa's really got the wrong idea about him, he is so strong and brooding and misunderstood. When I was holding him I could feel his thin, firm chest-"

The shaman, who usually encouraged this sort of talk, interrupted asking, "Did you see any more?"

Maily hesitated, the flow of her story having been tripped up, bringing her mind forward in the story, "Yea, after a bit I wasn't so scared no more so I looked back over the rock. Actually, I asked Indrarinisellian if we could just leave because it was scary, but he said we couldn't leave yet. He didn't explain why, which was so sexy and mysterious, but so I got bored and watched more with him. And it wasn't that bad to watch as long as I focused on the blocks of nice rattlebones and tried not to look at the blue floating nighthaunt wisps that were randomly floating back and forth."

"Oh, and everything was silent. We were silent because we didn't want them to notice us and eat us, which they didn't because we made it back obviously, but we didn't know that we would make it back then on the overlook, so we were super quiet. But so were the Shyishians. There was a little electrical crackle when new blocks of skeletons would march through the Shadesgate and a sort of whine that I almost couldn't hear when nighthaunts flew in above them, and when the rattlebones marched their bones really did rattle, though even that sound was all in formation, it was a very satisfying sound, like a hundred knuckles cracking at the exact same moment."

"But after the fourteenth block of rattlebones came through, and a whole bunch of nighthaunts but no one could count them cause they just kept swirling around, the gate made a different sound, like it was softly crying. When I looked over I saw a dead person's idea of luxury coming through. The horses out in front were three by three, and each way bigger than the caravan horses and covered in gemstones and carved designs, but the horses themselves were rotten, flaps of skin hanging off torsos and large chunks bitten off to reveal rotten viscera that even way up on the outlook I figured it smelled a little bit bad. Instead of being bound to wood, like on the caravan, I think they were tied to a living thing of rotten meat and broken bone. After the horses came across the black, rippling plane of the Gate, the carriage appeared, and at first I thought it was beautiful until I realized the entire carriage was made of bones, ribs and skulls and legs and parts that could not have come from any animal in any story. There were two drivers, both had faces that were screaming, they looked like they were screaming so loud that I should have been able to hear them on the overlook, but the field remained almost silent."

Maily stopped, taking a few breaths. At first Dirk thought she was catching her breath, she was talking fast even by her usual standards, but then he saw his daughter's eyes and realized she was stalling, her will not to speak of something fighting against the intoxicant. Chemicals won out as she began again, her volume dropping off drastically. "And then the window came across and I looked into the darkness that came out of it like the glow of an anti-candle and I grew so sick that the threw up on the rock. Oh, Ameusume!" Maily broke from her story, her eyes growing wide in sudden realization, "Indrarinisellian saw me throw up! He must hate me now, oh no, oh no."

The shaman smacked the side of her head with his meaty palm, nearly throwing her out of the chair she was bound to. "The carriage." He growled sharply.

"I don't know!" Maily cried, on the verge of tears, "I couldn't look up again. I couldn't move. I don't know how long I sat there, I just looked at Indrarinisellian as he watched. He never got sick or scared, but he scowled and it was so scary. I was so scared."

"But after a while he looked back at me and he said, 'they are heading east. I will follow them. Go to town. Hurry.' and so I crawled until I was away from the overlook, but he barked at me in aelfish, a word I haven't learned yet, but I think he wanted me to run faster, so I didn't stop until I made it back to the Uopet family field and saw Biern and Kara and I was so tired so I told them and rested, then when I walked by the salting sheds I saw Bil and needed to rest and talk again, and then-" The shaman clutched her shoulder hard, indicating that she had spoken enough.

"The question," Boomed the shaman, projecting his voice for distressed crowd, "is what to do next. The town council will assemble in the front row."

The meeting had taken most of the day, dispersing only when the council members, having worked through mid-meal, became too hungry to continue. It seemed even the arrival of an army from Shyish, the land of the dead, was not enough to pause the endless backstabbing, politicking, and petty jealousies that infected the powerless body that nominally ruled the tiny village. Still, the problem was great enough that actual proposals did make it onto the agenda, and all of them had been discussed well enough to fairly decide that they were all infeasible.

Maran, one of the older fishermen, had thrown in the first real idea by proposing that the militia be called out, but it was Dirk himself who pointed out that the militia only theoretically existed and the men of the village hadn't actually trained for war in three years, and even then only for a few weekends when everyone had been unusually motivated by the bard that had passed through.

Then fat Mayor Garrou had proposed a diplomatic and trade envoy, which Dirk thought was far too pretentious of a term for anything Malibog-bayan would be able to put together. Though it was universally recognized that this was a preposterous idea since the dead, who need nothing, would have no need for trade and no one was completely sure if they were even capable of language. Still, owing to her position the idea had to be debated politely for an inordinate amount of time before quietly being set aside.

A few more ideas were proposed, from the silly (build walls around the town) to the heretical (call for Sigmar's aid), but ultimately nothing was decided in council.

As the assembled councilmen and concerned onlookers began to disperse, Nak Basura pulled Dirk over to a small clique. He avoided volunteering, but still got pressured into joining one of the two scouting missions. One would take a pair of boats up the coast and the other would follow the north path on land. The small group of tradesmen and senior fishermen decided with none of the drama that had plagued the council that these patrols would begin the next morning and be discussed each evening with the return of both groups. So decided, they, too, dispersed.

It had taken about as long for Indea to untie their daughter from the chair after being ignored for most of the day as she sobered up. The three of them walked home quietly, Maily's parents unable to suppress sidelong glances at their daughter.

Forty four crowns still needed to be made, and he had to pack for the scouting mission tomorrow. And what were they going to do about Maily? A nice, slow day had turned into a mess, but Dirk, a man used to the gloom of Ulgu, comforted himself with the thought that it wouldn't get any worse. He could just work through each of these problems, and then everything would be back to normal.

CHAPTER 2
King Telemon still dreamed of the flight from Shyish. Any pleasant dream of the old times could morph into a dream of the night of the water-fire. Kids running in play would change in the manner of dreams to kids running in fear. Faces fondly remembered would change to the corpse they left behind. Tonight it was Agantha, his love, who could be bested by no one riding her allopex, being run through by an ethereal lance as they lay together in bed, the dread ghost knight passing through the bedchamber walls as if they had been sleeping on the open sea bed.

Fewer than thirty trueborn Deepkin had survived the attack and flight to the realmgate that had brought them to Ulgu. But despite their reduced numbers, in the last few months King Telemon had begun to have hope for his people. The realm of shadows was more fertile than the realm of death, the seas were richer, the Stillsea more concealing, the magics harmonized better with the skills of the five Isharanns who formed the vital core of what remained of their community.

And best of all, an Isharann had been born. The three years of hiding had brought their population up to just over fifteen hundred half-born Namarti, and for an Akhelian to be born in so small a village after so little time, well it could have been chance, but King Telemon dared to hope that being further from Nagash's baleful influence made it easier for soul to find their way to Deepkin children.

But even that bit of good news wasn't enough to stop the dreams. He saw himself rising though the upper door of his coral mansion, still in the comfortable clothes of bed time. He could still feel the bladed polearm's haft solid in his webbed hand as he kicked his legs to rocket powerfully into the open water. He looked down upon the peaceful, hidden village to see the scene of madness that had burned powerfully into his memory. No one had mobilized, the cavalry mounts were being slaughtered through the bars of their coral cages. A few namarti lay dead with weapons in hand, but most simply lay dead, drifting slowly southwards as the tidal influence of the Black Pyramid pulled the realm into it's vortex. Some still fled but were being cut down as they ran by dark spectres. From his high vantage point, Telemon could see that even had they made it out of the village, a perfectly disciplined phalanx of skeletons had ringed every opening, and those who tried to flee upwards were being picked apart by nighthaunts who swarmed like a school of rabid piranhas.

Even as he floated mid-sea, another of the floating wights swooped from above. In his dream, having seen it so many times, having seen the loss and despair of the bloody exile to come, he could not summon the will to lift his kingly polearm to block. The scythe pulled clean through his undefended dream body. He felt nothing, it was a dream.

King Telemon's dream self looked up, sensing the dark and deathly force that overlooked the slaughter, a presence even higher up than himself. There, atop a chariot of bones, stood the Wight King Gul Bannash, his expression blank as a skull, his cold death energy visibly chilling the water around him. He still felt the old urge to charge the murderer. In the moment he hadn't thought it would be an act of revenge, nor had there been any idea that it could have ended the slaughter. It was simply his instinctual reaction to an attack to attack back, and his position as war-champion and Akhelian King to set himself against the strongest of the foe.

When it had happened, he had fought that urge with the knowledge that he was responsible for gathering survivors and leading a push out of the city, what would become a week long running battle to evade the tireless dead. But the dream had beaten him down night after night after night. He could not make the same choice any more, he simply couldn't care enough to move. He drew in a lungful of water, the aethersea enchantment around the town changing it to air as it passed his windpipe, looked again at the dead, hollow eye sockets of the thing which had taken so much from his people, and sighed, allowing his heavy eyes to close in surrender.

King Telemon opened his eyes in a grey, stone carved chamber. Nothing adorned the walls, but it wasn't as if he could have seen decorations in any case. The realm of shadow had little enough light and even at relatively shallow depths even that dimness was swallowed by the bleak waters of the Stillsea. He was as blind as a Namarti in the cavern he called his home, and the utter lack of currents in the water diminished his limited sensory range even further. Still, an Akhelian was skilled enough to function when confined to any one of his many exotic senses, and King Telemon had only survived this long by being an exemplar of his kind.

He pushed his back against the tied kelp bundle of bedding, floating up and out of bed. His royal polearm, shield, and falcion were layed out neatly on a rack, and most days he would carry one of them as he went around the village. But it was more to remind himself of what was, there was no real need to impose much leadership on the small and deeply scarred hideaway.

But today he drifted past, his hand lightly brushing the three matching pieces of wargear, seeing the onyx inlaid with gems in his minds eye even though they were invisible in the present darkness. His bonded deepmare had been slaughtered while still caged in its royal pen, helplessly butchered by the Wight King's vindictive shades, and lance combat was ineffective from the back of an Allopex who was often longer than the spear its rider would carry.

He grabbed instead a cruel, unadorned hook blade with three sharp serrating spikes along the outer edge, hooking the plain, ugly weapon into his belt. Next to it was a small net on two thick throw lines and woven through with angry, weighted spikes. He took it in his off hand as he swam out of his cave.

Immediately upon passing out of the threshold, the sea feeling of a hundred warriors caressed his skin. There were more deepkin outside the mustering volume that formed the front yard of the Akhelian and Namarti barrackses, but this hundred strong phalanx was the crew of warriors who would safeguard the future of the Deepkin.

Telemon concentrated on sounds, listening for the voice of Morwann, the most senior of the surviving Isharanns. Judging by how active the soulrender had been in the weeks leading up to today, Telemon was sure he would be out early. And sure enough, he heard the familiar voice directing Namarti on the sea floor. Telemon swam down to greet him.

"Three years, Telemon." complained Morwann's voice, a deep rumble that could carry across the village when the need arose. "We have let our reserves dwindle to nothing. The first part of what we take will have to be used to heal wounded Namarti, even before we turn back home."

It was an old argument, a three year old argument in fact. Morwann had been the voice of those who had wanted to begin raiding as soon as they had established their new hidden village, but the sea had carried louder the sounds of those who councilled seclusion, prudence, and the inward focus that was their natural Aelfen disposition. Finally more of the Deepkin had come to feel safe in their new hideout and feel the pressure of their dwindling spirit energy reserves, and when the current had finally changed Telemon and a few others had joined the stream for the sake of consensus.

Still, even after consensus had been reached it had taken a few more months for the phalanx to re-train after the long period of hiding. The stockpile had run completely empty, which concerned the Isharrans, since a completely drained soul cache made the crystals more brittle. But it had concerned the Namarti more, who had been banned from copulating for weeks and were ferociously restless. The half-born did not get the same pleasure from the reproductive act that the higher castes did, but they felt much more keenly the need to propigate the species and the thought that they would end their short half-lives childless struck them with existential fear. The eighty accompanying the phalanx today would fight ferociously, Telemon was certain.

"It will be a soft target, soulrender, I have scouted it myself." Telemon assured his senior spellcaster, "I worry only that we will waste too many of their lives in the fury of our initial assault."

Morwann laughed, a rumble that carried strongly through the water, "And who is it that has to tell our battle hungry fighters to hold back in their first action since the Wight King attacked?"

Telemon gave a friendly sigh, "Everyone here wants a rich harvest today. None are blind to their duty."

The two leaders bickered out of habit, but there was no bite to it. There had been sparks in the days after the death of their old village, but the shadowed waters of Stillsea and the constant reminders of how few remained had chilled their spirits in the last three years. Besides, there were only five Isharanns left, six with the newborn, and the twenty two surviving Akhelians pushed the balance of power unquestionably to Telemon.

They both had tasks to see to before the raid began, and Morwann turned back to his Namarti as Telemon swam back up to the cages that had been coral-bound high on the cliff face overlooking the muster field. Agantha's Allopex had saved his life after the dead had slaughtered his deepmare, and now it bucked rebelliously against the bars that confined it. The grey sharklike apex predator had been a captive of the Deepkin military for long enough to know that being transferred to this tiny cage meant it was time for action. It knew this would be the first chance in a long time when nothing but the strength and willpower of it's Akhelian rider would be holding it captive. Telemon knew that if it was able to power through him, it would turn and eat both him and his second, Garax, who was swimming in from the armory with a harpoon launcher the size of his long, aelfen torso strapped to his back.

"Seas conceal you, Garax," Telemon said by way of greeting.

"And currents carry you, King Telemon. When we took her out yesterday she was feisty. Will you remain dominant?" Garax said it lightly, the banter of nobles before battle, but it was a question as well. Allopexes were not deepmares to be bonded with honor and soul harmonizing. They were fierce preditors and wild animals that were never tamed. The task of a rider was to beat down and dominate his mount, to force it through cruelty and violence to perform in battle. Telemon had only ever ridden one in combat once, three years ago.

But Telemon was certain he could do it, and Garax would have refused to ride as second if he had doubted the King.

The two spoke lightly of village events, gossiping about the mood of the Namarti and their impressions of the newborn Isharann's health and how the queer blackness that smothered the southern Stillsea had shifted fish habitats. They spoke of anything but the battle to come. They were not nervous as they readied combat gear and riding harnesses, work too personal to entrust to half-born servants, but even for veterans there was a shift in mood as the importance of what was to come hung over them.

A tidal shift filled the water of the mustering volume, flooding the sea senses of every Deepkin and pushing aelf and equipment towards the sea floor. Those who had eyes instinctively looked up, though the massive shadow within the blackness could only be sensed through bio-electric nerves, pressure against the skin, and the sound so large a beast made as it passed placidly though the water. It had been their biggest gain in the new village until the birth of the new Isharann when five Akhelians who had fled without mounts had left the village for six weeks, only to return with one of the biggest Leviadon sea turtles that anyone had ever seen.

The dome of it's upper shell was much more rounded than the breeds in the oceans of Shyish, which had initially made some skeptical of it's streamlining, but the advantage for the harpoonists on the higher part of the shell to aim over the heads of the aelfs in front of them, and in terms of the line of sight advantage around the perimeter of the Leviadon itself had soon become apparent. The underside sported a long shell that was also curved, but spread wide to give good coverage of the four joints and neck from any ground based attack. The real prize had been the fins, each of which was longer than a tall Deepkin, and broader than an aelf which his hands outstretched. Thick, too, strongly muscled all along the rim, offering both a powerful forward stroke and a strong spin that could both turn rapidly on an enemy and drag it along under the powerful currents each stroke generated. Instead of the usual compliment of four, the beast they had brought to heel was big enough for all five of the hunters, and as they brought it over the mustering volume they spun the beast in the water, showing themselves standing proud on their hunting platform with twin pronged spears and harpoons at the ready. All their gear was old and bore the signs of frequent repair, but from the song the edges sang as they sliced cleanly through the water those below could tell that it was all lovingly sharpened and maintained.

All three Allopexes, Agantha's and the other two who had been ridden through the gate, slammed against their cages in renewed fury, hungry to hunt their natural prey. Telemon grinned at the ferocity of his mount, but suspected it would take far more than three of them to take down a beast of that size.

With the arrival of the last beast, the time for preparations was over. Closing eyes that saw nothing in this cold, inky blackness, he concentrated on his pressure senses and swam out to the open center of the muster volume while taking a quick count. Yes, he decided, they were fully assembled. Just under a hundred Deepkin forms, and just over a hundred if one counted the three Allopexes, nine Fangmora eels, and Leviadon they were taking with them.

Noticing the King taking center stage, Morwann smacked Tidecaster Annileth on the arm to get his attention. The young, barely qualified tidecaster jumped in shock before noticing what Morwann was indication. With fumbling hands he formed a box of seawater magically separated and Tidecalled a great vibration into it. The spell was a simple one, but it had the effect of creating a rumbling siren call like a deep, undersea trumpet, calling all in the cube to order.

An expectant silence fell and King Telemon's long experience as a leader of Deepkin told him to wait a moment for the anticipation to build before beginning, "Deepkin of Mathlann hear me." Nothing he was going to say was new to any of them, but the pre-battle announcement was expected of him, so he did his best to project as much drama and authority into his voice as he could manage. "Our well of souls has run dry. For three years we have hidden and rebuilt after the slaughter brought to our village by the Wight King Gul Bannash," The mention of that name brought angry growls bubbling from the mouths of half-born and true-born alike, but Telemon continued, "And what we have built does not yet equal the glory of the old Narko Village. But after three years our efforts, all our efforts, have built a new Narko, one that will be a strong, rich, and well hidden foundation for future generations. After our disaster we did not skulk and hide. We built! And we can be proud of what we have built here!" When Telemon had been younger, he remembered the sorts of whoops and hollers the old King Leodin had been able to whip up in his pre-raid speeches. The cheers that his words evoked were not as strong, but he could still hear a measure of enthusiasm in them.

"Today is the day we move forward. Today we stop building mere foundations and start building our next generation who will carry our people forward. The energy we take today will be enough to offer every household the warmth of a child, and it will secure the seas for three weeks of travel in any direction. Our village will never suffer the same disaster again!" Again cheers at this, but Telemon worried that he was going on for too long now. They had gathered for a job, not to listen to him blow bubbles into the sea.

"It has been a long time since any of us had fought, but this must not become a bloodbath. Be neither too aggressive nor too hesitant, for each Deepkin who falls will be a blow to our weakened community, and every one of our prey slaughtered outside the influence of a lurelight will be a blow to our future. Narko needs us all to fight with precision and discipline, agility and strength. When the tide rolls out I don't want a single soul spent on that beach. So mount up brothers, cousins, and kin. The tides call us to war."

Dirk and Indea lay on their backs under the thin sheet, hand in hand. Indea slept peacefully, but Dirk was having trouble keeping his mind off everything that had happened that day and the planned scouting expedition the next morning. He had started getting things ready, getting out his old, rusty militia spear and loading his backpack, until Indea had complained that it was bedtime and pulled him into bed. He focused on the heat of his wife's body next to his own and the comforting feeling of their hands clasped together on the bed between their hips, but it was not enough to put him to sleep.

The always thick gloom seemed thicker tonight, pressing down more strongly on his chest. The sensation of pressure on his body was just an expression of his anxiety, he realized, as he drew in a deep breath to relax. The air carried the tang of sea salt, unusual despite living right on the coast since the Stillsea almost never experienced wind. He wondered what sort of omen it was to have a wind on the Stillsea, but chided himself inwardly for allowing his unrest to morph into absurd superstitions. The expedition would offer a small ritual of pain to the patron goddess Ameusume in the morning, and that would take care of the divine aspect of their mission.

Too anxious to sleep, but no so anxious that he wanted to get up in the night's heavy darkness, so he lay there, taking comfort in the presence of his lover as the cycle of worries spun around again. Eyes were as useless here as they had been on the sea floor. Unlike in the realm of death, it turned out that there were places in the realm of shadows that did not brighten in the slightest as one came out from the depths. Annileth had cast only a very light aethersea over the beachhead, just enough for the Akhelians at the front of the raiding force to sea-sense if anyone was moving around in the small coastal village. Telemon sat just above the waterline, only himself, Garax, and the ominous fin of his Allopex exposed to the air. No one was moving in the village. The only risk tonight was the chance they might fail to capture a handful due to ill-advised casualties or clever escapes.

The Akhelian King gave the go-command, a soft hiss that barely travelled to the warriors next to him, who in turn hissed softly to signal the warriors next to them, and on down the line, until the entire Deepkin line was moving right at the surface of the unnaturally still water. The seventy five Namarti warriors, split amongst bow-armed reavers and two-handed lanmari blade armed thralls, moved forward in groups led by the four Isharann Soul Renders, the fifth Isharann, the tidecaster Annileth, followed behind the wall of bodies.

Telemon scanned the body language of the tidecaster, wondering if his hesitance was the result of cowardice. After a moment of consideration, he decided that it was. The youngest Isharann had only been an apprentice soulscryer during the flight from Shyish, but the new village had no surviving soulscryers to continue his training, and more critically no tidecasters had survived, the last having laid down his life at the realmgate to conceal where the village had hidden. And so Annileth had been retrained from written manuals and the scraps of knowledge the four soulscryers possessed very much against his own will. The boy lacked confidence, talent, and experience, and it seemed that with battle imminent his ineptitude was breeding a degree of cowardice. The plan had already been altered to account for his failings, allowing him to stay out of the battle itself and only requiring him to cast very light aethersea over specific portions of the village, but such accommodations left a bad taste in Telemon's mouth.

The tidecaster boy may have been a disappointment, but as Telemon sensed the rest of his army fanning out as the lightly rolling aethertide began to wax over the shoreline, his pride returned. The other four Isharanns were veteran soulrenders, equally capable of magical and combat feats, each of whom was perfectly comfortable fighting on the frontlines while still managing the harvests of their assigned Namarti support squads. His Akhelians, of course, he had complete confidence in, each strong and agile and fully in control of their aggressive mounts. And the Namarti were the hundred best of the thousand who had proved their worth simply by surviving the assault three years ago, and Telemon was so confident in their strength and battle acumen that he would take ten Namarti from Narko village over ten Akhelians from any softer Deephold.

While Telemon's mind was wandering, the opening stages of the raid had fallen into position. The ground troops, the Namarti and Isharanns, had made landfall on the beach by the large park in the center of town. Telemon sensed Annileth's shaky gestures and worried that the aethersea would be too thin for the reavers to aim their bows, but the real test would come later, so he said nothing.

Three Akhelians mounted on swift Fangmora eels had split off and sat just under the water's surface, though on this dark and abandoned beach they could probably have lit a fire without raising an alarm. These were his three remaining Morrsarr Guard, hard charging eel cavalry armed with the dreaded voltspear that could channel the energy of the bioelectric Fangmora into a coursing electrical current. Which would today be wasted lighting wooden houses on fire to create a barrier along the south that would help drive the townsfolk into the village center.

The main part of the army had finally drawn into the central open park in the center of town under the thin aethersea. The Isharanns eyed the statue in the middle of the park that announced the village's allegiance to She Who Thirsts with wary anger. But for now, Morwann keened a low whistle that carried cleanly even through the sound dampening shade of the Ulgu atmosphere, and when Telemon returned the whistle he dispatched a Namarti to ring the town's gathering bell as loud and long as possible. At the same moment, Annileth thickened the aethersea that hung over the air and extended it south to provide a path for the three Fangmora raiders.

Dirk was awakened by light and sound, both of which were alien to his normal experience. Out the small, south facing window of the bedchamber a fire glowed bright enough to illuminate his wife's soft face. From the north rang the muster bell. It was clear what was going on, and he shook Indea from half awake to fully awake. With a glance out the window, she grasped the situation as quickly as he had.

"Go ahead with your blankets to the muster, Indea. I will get Maily and be right behind you." She nodded in agreement and rolled out of bed to shrug on a tunic. Still in his bed-pants, Dirk rushed to the other of the house's three rooms, to find their daughter already awake, though still bleary and confused.

"Father, what-" she began, sleep blurring her words, but Dirk was quick and to the point, "Fire, baby. Clothes on, we are going to the town center." Her window did not face the fire, but the soft, orange glow illuminated the thick mists outside the window. In under two minutes all three of them were out of the house and headed toward the sound of the ringing bell in the darkness.

They moved quickly even in the choking darkness, well used to the layout of the town which was so often blanketed in shadow. Dirk followed the sounds of his wife moving ahead of him until sound ceased. Before he could register the quiet, he bumped into Indea from behind. His wife grabbed him and shushed him firmly. Maily came up behind them, placing a hand on her mother's back to indicate her presence in the blackness, picking up on the need for silence.

Dirk realized immediately what had stopped her. They were on the back side of the shaman's house, a building away from the town center, but there was no sound. Even with the sound choking and light clogging mists sitting so thickly over Malibog-bayan, they should be able to hear the distant susurrus of excited chatter and heavy footsteps of a large group. But all they heard was the bell, louder now than it had been in the house. Dirk and his family had made it to the muster point fairly quickly, but there was no way they were the first ones there. And who was ringing the bell if there was no crowd of people? Just the shaman? Had everyone rushed to the fire instead of the town center?

Dirk heard Maily about to speak, but he put his hand over her mouth, missing in the darkness and slapping her nose, but getting the point across nonetheless. A pair of footsteps were coming from behind them at a run, and in the darkness, the three completely silent family members were overtaken by another villager less cautious than Indea had been. The footfalls faded quickly as whoever it was went around the house. The sound had not wholly vanished when the whistle of a sharp blade hissed though the thick air.

The sound that followed was one that Dirk had heard only once before, and his wife and daughter had never imagined. It had been on his one trip to Ang Lungsod, the local trading hub, when he had gotten lost down the filthy back alleys infested with cutpurses and cutthroats. He had been younger then, more convinced of his own immortality, and treated the infamous underbelly as a tourist might. The charm had run out as fast as the blood of the man he had seen stabbed cleanly through the ribs with a rusty short sword. The sound that man had made at the close of his life, the pained gasp that lacked the air to be a scream, was the same that Dirk's neighbor made now.

The bell tolled, its rhythm unbroken.

The silence hung over them, permeating the thick, black shade. Dirk put his hand on his wife's shoulder and tugged backwards. She silently agreed and the three of them turned back towards the fire.

Dirk spared a moment to consider how the mind played tricks on a person. He knew it was just the stress of the situation giving him a sensation of physical pressure, but he could have sworn that the air had grown even thicker and saltier in the last few seconds.

King Telemon could not risk dismounting his Allopex mount while it was unsecured and his second, Garax, was riding, but the aethersea was still too thin for his riders to ascend. The three to the south had managed to coax thier Fangmora to rise up from true water into the atmosphere, but they struggled for every inch into the air and had none of the speed Telemon knew his elite scouts were capable of.

Telemon waved over the swiftest of the six remaining eel cavalry stationed with him as he penned a squid ink note onto a kelp and clay tablet. "Get it to Morwann" he said as he handed off the short order. The rider stabbed his spiked heels into the sensitive ribs of his Fangmora mount and they shot off into the shallows, keeping in the water until the sand underneath scraped the eel's underbelly. Like its cousins, the beast struggled to rise, but the rider, an experienced veteran, dismounted in the shallows and pulled his eel forward for the short distance to the cluster of casters.

It was a long few minutes made longer by Telemon's impatience, but eventually the air began to thicken and the small fishes of the Stillsea's surface swam upwards into black sky, no longer able to tell ocean from sky. The King's senses began to widen, as the thicker aethersea transmitted pressure waves, micro-electric charges, and sound more strongly over a greater distance. Focusing those senses behind him, he could feel Garax mounted behind him as his second shifted the harpoon gun on his shoulder as it grew more bouyant, lightening his load. The Allopex beneath him began to shift upwards too, as the load that had been heavy in plain air became lighter in turn. Telemon gave a tug on the reigns and a kick low on the side to encourage the predator to rise further.

The other Deepkin elites, some more fidgity with impatience than Telemon, were rising to either side of the Akhelian King. They all kept their position and spacing accurately in the darkness, their honed sea-senses giving them better perception in lightless regions than a mere human would have on a clear, sunny day.

Finally, Telemon judged that the Annileth had summoned an aethersea as firm as he could manage. Narko village war-sign was a variant of shyishan dolphin speech, and with a pop, whistle and two clicks the Akhelian formation swam ten feet above the ocean's flat surface the remaining distance to the shore. Three giant sharks comfortably carried two aelfs each, six long eels each faintly buzzing with bio-electric potential, and one massive turtle beast that continued to rise until it covered the rest of the lesser beasts in its shadow. With all the training they had done in the months preparing for the raid, the beasts were as familiar with the signal as their riders were, and a few of them jumped forward before they could be brought under control.

But they only needed to be controlled for a few minutes, as soon they were overhead of the Namarti foot troops gathered in the field at the town center. Noticing what Morwann had seen on arrival, he indicated for his second to fire the harpoon gun at the abominable statue to the village deity, recognizable at a glance as a daemonette of She Who Thirsts. With a CHUNK, a four foot bronze spear launched behind Telemon and buried its hooked end deep into the foul sculpture's chest. Garax did not need more orders from Telemon, he knew to tie the thick cable connecting the back end of the harpoon to a tie point on the Allopex's saddle, giving a click, pop, click with his mouth when the cable was secure.

Every Allopex rider that Telemon had ever met hated their mount for the stupid, agressive beasts that they were. And so it gave them all pleasure to pull the small encourager pick from their pocket and stab two inches into a sensitive point on the shark monster's flesh. The pain sent a convulsion through the powerful body pulling every single thick muscle at once, contorting the Allopex in a twitch that could and had utterly destroyed the torsos of Iron Jaw Orruks. The incredible force pushed against the thick medium of the aethersea as it would have against water, propelling beast and riders forward, nearly knocking the two Deepkin flat as they encountered the mystic waters in front of them. In two strokes of its mighty tailfin, the Allopex drew the cable tight and without pause the third caused a loud snap. The interupption of forward motion pushed the two riders forwards, but the shark did not stop completely. Rather, the statue had been shattered at the long, elegant calves and fell forward in the beast's wake, crashing to the earth without the aethersea's slowing influence.

The Deepkin knew better than to break battle discipline with cheers, but each felt a rising surge of joy to sense the destruction of the statue of their racial enemy. They channeled that energy into the fight, each breaking off into the four groups assigned to the raid.

Garax cut the cord holding the harpoon, trusting that the group remaining behind would retrieve it as his King allowed the Allopex to shoot forward into the thick darkness of the village. They were quickly joined by two eel riders, and two dozen Namarti surrounding an Isharann soulrender followed behind. Two more groups of similar composition would be heading north and east, while the Leviadon, tidecaster, and remaining foot troops would be remaining in the middle under Morwann's command, continuing to ring the bell.

There were more sounds, and the air was definitely getting thicker. Dirk and Indea clasped hands tightly as they ran south and he could hear their daughter breathing heavily as she held her mother's other hand. Some of the sounds were definitely other villagers running, shouting, doing whatever in their confusion they thought was best. But it was because other sounds were so clearly not the villagers that the family kept silent, never responding to cries for aid and running clear from cries of pain.

But they had returned to the fire, or rather, what had turned out to be lots of fires. At the southern edge of town there were few enough feet trampling the earth that a thin grey grass could grow on the ashen soil, covering the ground. But being thin it usually burnt quickly, covering a lot of ground but burning out before it could spread to nearby structures. How, then, had the whole row of houses that housed four generations of the Sunog family managed to catch fire?

Something flew above the flames, like a ribbon too quick to see, darting down behind a burning house. There were no birds in the plain on which Malibog-bayan was situated, only in the southern forest that was slowly being infected by the Black did anything fly. And that was reason enough for Dirk to immediately feel fear. The unnatural shape of the airborne apparition only made it worse. In an instant his mind considered turning back, maybe to the coast, or maybe inland to the caravan road.

But he had missed his chance. Illuminated by the fire, his family had been spotted. Chismis Sunog was a decade younger than Dirk, but even if she hadn't been too young her nasty personality would have kept him from falling for her attractive exterior, even though Indea didn't always believe when her husband said this. But there was no trace of the shadowsouled vixen on her flame-lit face tonight, just fear and confusion.

"Taba!" She shouted at them, pain in her voice and pain in her leg as she limped quickly towards them, "Dirk, please help Taba!" She gestured wildly in the general direction of their small burning hut.

Dirk and Indea were true soul mates, one of the rare truly happy marriages in a village with so small a dating pool, and nearly always came to the same conclusions. Even without speaking, they had agreed not to stop and help anyone, but when being directly confronted like this...

Dirk looked over at his wife with a grimace, which she nodded and matched. He let go of his wife's hand and followed quickly to where Chismis was indicating. The heat pressed against his face, another pressure in the already heavy atmosphere of salt and shadow. There he was, Chismis's fat and lazy husband, except it wasn't clear what exactly he was stuck on. He had fallen some distance from the fire, in a well lit patch of already burnt out grass, some debris scattered around him, but he did not seem to be in immediate danger. Dirk wondered if the two of them, not the villages brightest stars by any reckoning, were simply panicking? No, wait, Dirk noticed something wrong with the man's leg, but from this angle he couldn't quite tell what it was.

Chismis broke into a run, leaving Dirk behind as she went to her husband. Dirk slowed, assessing the situation. Had Taba fallen into some sort of hole? Was he laying at an awkward angle? It almost seemed as if his left leg ended just above the knee, but for all his laziness Dirk knew Taba to be a perfectly healthy farmer. Dirk had helped build fencing for the man's new-

It happened faster than Dirk could react. He didn't know where it came from, if it had been in the darkness or around the building or simply been there and he hadn't noticed, but suddenly a monster the length of Chismis's burning house flew undulating through the air. Somehow a massive bladed pike longer than Dirk was tall was on the side of the flying eel, Dirk couldn't tell if the eel was holding it or if it was simply flying alongside the anatopistic sea creature. In a single blink it had already moved, the forward motion too quick to register, though the sense of agile undulation was powerful in Dirk's overtaxed mind, and the pike blade had already pierced Chismis's torso and pulled a slice halfway up her back. Another blink and the poor woman was split in half from gut to shoulder and only the floating tail of the beast was visible in Dirk's peripheral vision as it swam through sky back into darkness.

He couldn't know how long he was frozen, his mind simply off as he saw the legless, struggling Taba pull himself weeping towards the ruined remains of his once beautiful young wife. Maybe it was hours, maybe it was less than a second. Then the impact of what he had seen hit him like an electric shiver down his body. He nearly fell down. His muscles tensed again even before the shock had passed, pure blind terror taking hold.

Dirk possessed no extra senses. His hearing was good, like all those who lived in the shadowed, sound dampened town of Malibog-bayan, but not magically good, not preternaturally talented. And though he was decently devout, Ameusume had never blessed him with any special gifts. When his terror clenched hard on his muscles, throwing him to the ground just as a powerful rush of air and lingering electrical field told him the unimaginable eel-beast passed at high speed over him, it was luck. The sort of singular luck a man enjoys no more than once in his life, and typically not even that much. On his back, in the dirt, the sheer size of the animal was viscerally clear in the few moments that he saw it. Only a foot away he could smell the fishy-salt scent, feel the heat and electricity that radiated from its slimy scales, understand in his bones that he was being charged by a thing that outweighed him at least twice over moving faster than anything in his lived experience. Only an inch away was all that force carried by a slender and muscled, too-white arm carrying a charged and wickedly bladed polearm that would transmit all that force into a cutting surface less than a hair's-breadth wide. Without that instant of impossible luck, he knew his body would have been destroyed.

Time sped up as Dirk rolled away, the eel slipping through the air into the darkness. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted with more power than he had ever run in his life towards the darkness where his family waited. But he knew it was too slow. His mind had the measure of his predator now, and at six steps he clenched his stomach, knowing the blade would plant squarely between his shoulders. At seven steps he clenched again. He was still clenching at strides eight, nine, and ten, not daring to look back. His girls, bless them, had already fled into the darkness. He wished he could see them as he died, but was more glad that they had gotten away. Except then he kept taking steps, kept drawing breath. He did not slow. His lungs burned but he knew he had to keep running. The monster was faster than him but he had to keep running.

And then it was dark. Dirk stumbled, twenty seconds of overexertion taking a greater toll on his body than the hardest day at work. He fell, meeting the ground for the second time in a minute. He gasped for air, feeling like he was at the bottom of the ocean, the heavy air took so much effort to draw in and press out, the thickness filling he exhausted throat, the effort of it seemed so much, it would just be easier to stop breathing, but the fire in his lungs needed him to breath out. Dirk hurt so much. So much. Dirk wanted to die, and in a flash the image of the blade before his eyes forced him to pull in a sharp, deep breath. That was better. It still hurt, but it hurt less to breath deep. Still fast, but as deep as he could manage.

Eventually Dirk was just out of breath, not desperately gasping for air, and his body began to relax around the edges. His arms did not need to be so tight, and he could lean his back against whoever's house he had ended up next to. He opened his eyes to the darkness, a faint orange flicker in the deep mists indicating where he had come from. As his brain reset-

A touch on his shoulder kicked everything back into overdrive as he screamed. It was short and choked for lack of air, but still loud and undignified. Dirk did not know how he got to his feet from that position, but suddenly he was, his breathing again hard and ragged.

"Dirk, breathe." Commanded the soft, authoritative voice he had fallen in love with. It set him at ease, a shiver of relief radiating out from the spot she had touched. Seeing him relax again, she said "Hurry, we have to go" in a loud whisper. Without waiting for a response, she took his hand, a familiar gesture, and pulled him into a ragged jog westward, keeping just far enough north to see the faint flickers of flame that ran in a line for what seemed like the whole length of the village. Dirk was in no shape to be thinking, but Indea's mind kept wondering what was happening, certain only that it wasn't good, and that it wasn't just the flying eel monster.

King Telemon almost considered calling his Akhelians back to the sea. They weren't needed, and the struggle of keeping the beasts from going berserk was almost more trouble than it was worth. Of course, it was never good to go into battle with less force than required, so he didn't regret bringing every bit of heavy support that Narko village could provide, but seeing the state of the village under attack, he wondered if maybe they could have taken the village just as cleanly in a daytime assault with half as many warriors.

He had sliced two with his cruelly barbed blade tonight, drawing the souls out by the hooked end to be collected by Ayuran, the soulrender of the battle formation at his tail. Garax was doing most of the work, he had claimed fourteen souls in fourteen shots, and after each one he had been able to reclaim his harpoon. It was as leisurely a soul collection as Telemon had ever been a part of. Almost casually he tossed his net, interwoven with spiked weights, on a father and child who were peering out their window hoping to see what was happening. Four Namarti thralls followed up, kicking through the flimsy wooden wall and drawing out their souls for collection.

"Garax," He called back to his second, "we aren't needed here, hop off and take charge."

"Is the battle too tough for you, my king?" The veteran second asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, that's right, they are putting up too much of a fight," he replied in kind. Shifting his tone back to seriousness, he said, "I am going to patrol the edges while we Annileth still has the strength to keep up the aethersea. I will make sure no one is escaping or that there isn't a pocket of resistance forming. You stay here and lead the formation."

"Bah! This formation could lead itself. Let me come with you, watch your back."

"It probably could, at that. But if Annileth's tidecasting starts to fail, I want as little encumbrance on this Allopex as possible. Agantha would kill me if I beached her mount."

Garax moaned, but hopped out of his gunnery position, seeing the sense of his king's words. No one had much faith in Annileth, and their reliance on him as Narko's only tidecaster sank everyone's soul. In under a silent minute Garax had unfastened the excess harnessing, and a quick shake from the Allopex dropped it. The excess weight fell slowly, as if underwater, and Telemon kicked his unburdened mount into an even pace up and out to the west before it hit the dry land.

There were at least two of the flying eels, and they had some particularly cruel breed of aelf riding them. Dirk had caught another glimpse as the family drew closer to the flame, watching three more of the villagers they had spent their life with get run down. Lena Sunog was only ten, and the only thing Dirk could think of was that she was younger than his own daughter as he watched in horror in hiding while the eel riding aelf's spear caught against the bottom of the child's ribcage, refusing to slide back off the spear and get lifted up into the air as the flying eel slithered up past what could be seen.

Dirk had written her off as dead and moved on. She probably was dead already. But as they slunk deeper into the darkness they heard sickening scrunch of a body falling into the dirt from a great height. She was dead for sure now. She was younger than Maily. Had been younger. Would never be older.

They went north after that. He couldn't be sure how far. It was dark tonight, unusually dark, and the mist was thick enough to impede him as he walked, like trying to wade through the Stillsea. Townsfolk usually didn't go outside when the shadow sat this thickly over the town, just waited until the end of night and the thinning of shadows. He was still pretty sure he was going generally towards the caravan road, north and west of the last place he had been sure of his position, but there was no time tonight for being certain. They would keep running until visibility improved, getting as far away from the disaster as possible, then reasses once they could see decently.

This was life in Ulgu, as if the shadow wind knew disaster was coming tonight and spread itself thick to milk the fear of the freeholders.

They moved as quietly as possible and thanked Ameusume for eating the noises they made, the villager's poetic way of describing how the mists unnaturally muffled sound. In return, they heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing but the ground under their feet and the damp, warmth-stealing chill of the mist. They could also still hear the bell ringing from the center of town, piercing faintly but distinctly with the warp-enchanting engravement that allowed its sound to travel underneath the layer of shadow and propagate on the clean air beneath.

Still, they were as safe as they could imagine in the sensory deprived night. Nothing could catch them unless it stumbled on top of them.

But then Indea stumbled. The abrupt jerking halted the other two, nearly yanking the arm's out of their sockets and pulling Maily to the ground with her. Dirk did not notice the strange whistle of wind that passed right through where his throat would have been had he not been pulled back that short inch. He could hear Indea's small choked cry that she bit back as soon as it came out of her mouth. Dirk knew his wife was smart and was fully aware of the danger of giving away their position.

He turned and knelt above her, still holding hands. Dirk paused for a moment, but the silence told him that she had figured out no way to communicate how she was doing without eyes or ears. He straightened his legs and started to pull her up, but a small, sharp gasp escaped her lips. She tried to let go of his hand, but he held on tight, not wanting to lose his love in the darkness. Was she hurt? Was she telling him to go on without her? She should know Dirk would never abandon her, certainly not just because of a stumble. He tried again to pull her up, but she pulled his hand down, grunting in pain.

Dirk let her guide his hand down the familiar contours of her body, his fingers brushing across the familiar softness of her arm, then the top of her breast, then the wonderful valley where-

She drew in a sharp, pained breath as his hand bumped the arrow that jutted out between ribs right next to the sternum. Blood dribbled over his fingers. A heart shot. She was already dead, there was no healing magic that Dirk knew of outside the fantasy tales of the arrogant Sigmar and the harlot Allarielle that could save her now. This was the time for weeping and cradling in arms and desparately clinging to the last few precious moments together. Indea, the mother of his child, the love of his life, was pouring warm vitality from her chest, her soul only minutes from crossing the Shadesgate.

But Dirk, like all Ulguans, had a dark pragmatism ingrained in his psyche. His first thought on realizing that his one true love had been murdered was that whoever was shooting would shoot him next. There was agony in his heart, but acting without a moment of sentimentality he reached over to grab his daughter and pulled them both to their feet, already taking the first stride of a sprint.

And that was when the air poured out of the sky. It was like the time he had gone to take a shower, but instead of releasing the cover of the bucket to allow the water to pour out gently from the small holes on the bottom, something had rotted away and the entire contents of the bucket had fallen on him at once. Except that he wasn't wet. And he wasn't choking, despite the pouring of an entire sky lasting much longer and pressing down with far more force than a single bucket had. The non-water grabbed him like a current at his ankles and pulled him back to the ground the moment he had stood up.

Dirk held on tight to his daughter's wrist, and she howled in surprise and pain and she fell with him, dragged by his iron grip and the magical non-waterfall. The thickened air-fluid carried him away from his dying wife and from the source of the arrow, his only blessing on this shadow-blighted night. When the raging torrent exhausted itself, it deposited Dirk and Maily on thin grass growing in hard sandy dirt. It could have been anywhere in the village, and they could have been facing any direction.

The air had thinned with the strange event, and Dirk realized to his surprise that the air was still there even after what had felt like the sky falling on him. He didn't know what was going on, every part of tonight had been beyond his experience. He felt his mind shutting down, leaving him with the awareness of a prey animal. He tightened his already bruising grip around his daughter's wrist with the last vestige of human awareness and darted off like a rabbit through the concealing shadows.

As he patrolled in a wide arc, Telemon was pleased to see that nearly all the humans that had not yet detected the raiders were headed towards the bell. These he declined to kill, since it would be easier for the soulrenders to take collection if the extraction was performed nearby. Besides, the Namarti felt a desperate thrill with each soul they harvested, the benefit to the village was much more direct in this time of lack than it had been in richer times.

He did take two who had clearly encountered other Deepkin, spending a short minute herding them together with menacing passes of his snapping Allopex, then catching both in one net. Smacking his mount with a pain-rod, he dismounted, quickly tying them inside the barbed and weighted kelp-woven net. The struggling and crying out would serve to mark them for cleanup patrols in the ebb tide phase of the raid.

He mounted back up as the beast grew restless and fought for dominance again. The beast was well broken and gave in easily. Telemon sensed a large group ahead, it seemed the western phalanx had gotten farther than his had.

As he swam his mount towards them, he noticed a maniple taking down a group of three humans. A clean shot had taken one, and in the darkness the other two had paused to investigate, wholly oblivious of the fact that five thralls had taken positions in a semicircle around them, cutting off their main escape route while the three bow-armed reavers took shots. The thralls inclined their heads towards the approaching warleader a gesture inborn from a time when even their kind still possessed eyes. Telemon waved at the blind half-born and they returned to the task as he brought his allopex to a halt.

The reavers had not hesitated at either his approach or the human's fortune that had spared them from two otherwise well aimed shots. They had nocked and drawn taking careful aim. They sensed the human's movement through the currents of the aethersea and by locating the sounds they made; even eyeless, a Namarti thrall was as skilled with a bow as any aelf. At the moment the humans stood, two arrows flew.

And at the same moment, the aethersea collapsed. Telemon's Allopex no longer had buoyancy to support it and fell four feet, hitting the hard, dry dirt with three hundred and forty pounds of shark meat that had not been bred for land beneath a hundred sixty pounds of elf and another sixty pounds of gear and harnessing. Burden piled on bones piled on meat piled on organs all piled on a subcutaneous layer of fat wholly too thin to be supporting so much weight as organs bruised and blood vessels ruptured. With aelfen grace, Telemon lept from the saddle, landing on his feet, but landing hard in the unexpectedly unsupportive atmosphere as the shark monster flopped and suffocated in the thin atmosphere.

Those on the ground had been swept off thier feet, and Telemon snapped at them to get up. The usually graceful namarti fumbled and the Akhelion realized in the same moment that the collapse of the aethersea had allowed enough thin light in to let him see with his eyes instead of his sea-senses, and that the eyeless half-born were now truly blind, operating on touch and attenuated sound alone. He spared a glance for the pathetic struggles of his dead bond-mate's last possession and spared nothing at all for the humans they had been hunting before hissing a curse at all of them and sprinting towards the town center. The bell had stopped ringing with the collapse, but the tiny hint of light was enough for the eyes of an aelf used to pitch darkness to make his way efficiently.

The village was small and the Akhelian King had made his way back to the town center in short order. He found there no chaos. The Namarti stood where they were, calmly awaiting instructions, and the Leviadon had managed to land gracefully. Collected bodies were in one pile and soul harvested corpses in another. The only sign of distress here were the two Isharanns, the senior beating the junior senseless.

"Stop this!" Called Telemon with a voice of powerful authority as he strode towards the confrontation.

"This fool has-" Cried Morwann in a fit of pique without turning from the tidecaster who was curled in a ball on the ground, bruised and bleeding.

"I care not!" Telemon said, grabbing his fellow commander by the back of the robes and pulling him away, "Get that aethersea summoned immediately."

"He is a fool, an incompetant who deserves death," Insisted Morwann

"And I will carve him apart at the end of this, but the aethersea must be re-cast immediately. Back away, Soulrender!" He lifted the miserable wretch from the ground and held him in standing position. "Cast it" he screamed in the youth's face, "Cast it now."

The boy looked pathetic, traumatized, as if there was time for self pity when twelve of Narko fane's strongest assets were crushing themselves under their own weight and starving for oxygen as a result of his failings. It was garbage, thought Telemon, the boy had been coddled. So many had died three years ago that the whole fane had allowed the disease of pity and the wasting cancer of compassion to infest them. The boy hung in the air, letting Telemon's strength hold him up as his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. With a roar, Telemon let him drop and pulled the pain-rod that he used to discipline his mount from his belt. Thrusting the agony-enchanted end into the ragdoll's weak belly caused the wretch to snap from fetal position to an arched back, every muscle paralyzed by pain and nearly snapping ligaments in the process.

"There will be no more coddling for you, you damned soul-waste. When we get back to Narko you will be tortured in public and soul-flayed, but if you do not restore that aethersea right damned now, your soul won't even feed Namarti children, it will be cast back to She Who Thirsts!" Telemon was screaming, operational silence dramatically broken. Likely his angry deepkin hissing and lilting was scaring the remaining humans away from the center but it didn't matter any more. High tide had crashed to low and the raid was ended. It had been a disaster, but it would break the village if they came home with less than they left with.

By the end of the screaming tirade, the shock of the pain-stick was fading, though Annileth doubted the memory of it would ever leave him. He knew, he knew he was a failure. He knew he had never been suited for tidecasting and that his skills were not enough for what the fane required of him. He had been able to warn the leviadon, but all the other beasts would have fallen hard. Even if he raised the aethersea now most were probably dead. This had been the last hope for Narko fane and he, Annileth, had brought ruin on them. The shame hurt worse than the pain-stick had.

The Akhelian King aimed the pain stick again and the failed tidecaster flinched as if stung. Maybe the pain-stick did hurt worse than the shame. Shaking and broken, Annileth rolled onto his knees and lifted his back as much as he could. "I....will...." he gasped, grateful that he was not being required to stand. Closing his eyes he reached out to the magic inborn within him and shaped it into a long practiced but still unfamiliar form. Telemon had not been born with magic, but his complete aelf soul was enough to show him that the wretch was holding some kind of energy. Annileth held out one hand, still requiring the other to hold himself up, and needed one more element to complete the casting. "Water...." he breathed piteously.

Telemon spat in his face. A rage swelled within Annileth that shook the casting. Morwenn, watching the whole event with the attuned eyes of a fellow Isharann, barked in rage, quelling the wretch's moment of rebellion, replacing it with a coward's fear of pain. Annileth regained control over his casting, body shaking more with the effort, nearing the verge of collapse. He could work with the smallest drop of water, even the sweat on his body or dew on grass, but it would take more energy from his already taxed soul. But he feared what the two commanders would do to him if he couldn't get the aethersea restored, and he gave a mighty effort.

Telemon felt a seabreeze blow in from the Stillsea, an event so rare it could only be magic. Over a slow minute he felt the air thicken and the salt scent strengthen. The faint light dimmed, but at the same time his blinded sea-senses began to feel again in a diminished capacity. He felt the mob of Namarti begin to move more freely as their sight was restored. He cast his attention over to the landed leviadon, but the turtle leviathan simply flapped its fin-arms on the ground in reaction.

Telemon bent at the waist, one hand on his hip and the other reaching under the failure's slender, aelfin chin. "Not. Good. Enough." he growled. Annileth's eyes closed, and after a few quick, shallow breaths he inhaled strongly. The energetic glow that Telemon saw with the sight of his soul deepened and the aethersea thickened a bit more. Still thin, but Telemon felt the Leviadon struggling, it's fins waving under the bullying of its crew and slowly it gained bouyancy. It would have to struggle to maintain it's lift, but if the hard-shelled leviadon had managed lift with five riders and a full kit harness, then the other mounts would manage it as well, provided they weren't too badly wounded from the fall. He called over a Namarti who bore an Icon of Mathlann alongside his vicious Lanmari blade. With his hand he placed the Thrall's blade over the eye of the wretched tidecaster, instructing him to "be creative" should the aethersea fail again. The Namarti nodded in wholehearted agreement, and Telemon was incapable of feeling sympathy for the potential victim.

Finally, Telemon relaxed, turning to Morwann, "Ebb tide," he ordered, the most senior Isharann agreeing with a nod. Deepkin battleplanning emulated the four tides of the oceans. Not the Stillsea, since the magic of Ulgu suppressed the tides and waves and even small ripples on the surface of the water here, but most oceans. Most of life was lived at low tide, out of battle, recovering from the last raid and planning for the next. Low tide was naturally followed by flood tide, the lightning fast approach that overwhelmed the opponent in a battle's initial stages. The battle would then crest naturally into high tide, when the Deepkin forces had spread across the battlezone and the battle's objectives were secured. The spell failure had caught the forces in high tide, but with the aethersea back up, Morwann was already giving the ebb tide order. In the final phase of battle, captives were gathered up and secured, harvested souls were bound to gems, loot was taken, and the forces disengaged from any combat and melted back into the sea.

Tonight had been a simple raid, all things considered. They had faced no opposition, and Telemon's main goal had been to have his phalanx gain in confidence from a cleanly executed engagement. The morale benefits had been lost in the end, but in the ebb tide they would collect enough souls to make the expedition worthwhile. Living mortals who had been pinned were collected by teams of Namarti while the spirit lights of the soulrenders pulled in those souls who had been released in the fighting.

In the hustle of activity, Telemon sent out orders to pull all the mounted Akhelians back into the true-water of the Stillsea, before walking back to Morwann to consult.

"What are you hearing, Morwann?" He asked as an eyeless runner left the Soulrender with her message delivered.

"All three out formations have reported, it was basically a success, not counting that wasted soul over there. When we get back-"

The king interrupted, "It will be public and take a very, very long time, I promise. I need the numbers, Morwann."

Morwann sighed and collected himself, then paused to do the math in his head, "Around five hundred fifty souls collected in the fighting, with another hundred and fifty taken that still need processing. That leaves maybe fifty unaccounted for, and no sign of the Hyishan aelf the scouting parties had reported."

Telemon looked back at Annileth. He wanted those last fifty souls, but their tidecaster was nearly broken. He spoke decisively, "We pull back with what we have. Get the captives to the shore, but empty them all out on the beach. I won't risk taking anything live under water without a reliable tidecaster. Bind them so that if the aethersea goes out the true-born can finish the job by sight alone."

Morwann motioned assent, but muttered "A more ambitious king would pursue the last objectives."

Telemon rounded on him, rage rekindled, "It is your caste that has made a wreck of this, and you personally who were responsible for providing me with a tidecaster. I will be having restitution from you if we have lost mounts tonight. It is in recognition of the importance of this raid that I have not yet demanded your soul join your subordinate's in the flayer cages. So hold your own tongue or I will take it from you."

Morwann was disgruntled, he considered himself Telemon's equal and deserving of a certain level of dignity and submission. But that was only true in a ritual sense, and he kept quiet in recognition of who held the balance of actual power in the fane. After giving him a chance to condemn himself, Telemon accepted the silence as agreement. "Oversee the ebbing, Soulrender. I go to retrieve my mount."

They had run, Dirk and Maily, holding hands and holding back grief. They ran blind, unsure of direction or distance. And then they hit the Black like a wall.

Dirk was confused. Not knowing his direction, he was not surprised that he had drifted south. But he was certain they had not run all the way to the southern forest that had been the upper boundary of the Black for years now. And yet there was no denying it, they had suddenly passed from foggy, sound eating darkness to total sensory deprivation. The blackness of the shadowed night became a magical, consuming Blackness that pushed aggressively into the eyes, threatening to fill them and take sight away forever. Even though Maily had been right next to him, the sound of her footsteps and tired breaths had been muffled in the fog, but now his eardrums were stilled completely. Not only were external sounds silenced, even the internal sounds of his breathing and footfalls and thumping heartbeat were completely gone, robbing him of the feedback telling him that he was in fact breathing or walking or beating his heart. They had run past the smell of sea salt, but they had grown used to the scent of the night mist hanging over the thin grass and dirt, but in the Black a numbness overtook nose and mouth leaving them so insensitive that even the feeling of air passing in and out vanished from perception. His whole body had gone insensate. It was not the tingle of numbness. It was not the heavy buffering of a thick blanket. There was simply nothing to feel. No temperature sensation, not hot, not cold, not perfectly even. No wind, not even air pressure against his skin. In the absence of sensation, he felt his light bedclothes acutely and the press of his feet against the rough sole of his boots was a remarkably sharp sensation. Most of all, he felt his daughter's hand only through the direct warmth and pressure of where they contacted, no residual warmth nearby at all, none of the little things that made a held hand evoke the full feeling of a loved one, just a palm pressed against a palm.

The villagers of Malibog-bayan had avoided the Black for good reason.

Dirk gripped tightly on his daughter's hand, probably too tightly to compensate for the lack of sensory feedback. He did not turn around, that was how people got lost. He carefully, nervously, stepped backwards, one careful step at a time. Six small steps backwards made up for the two sprinting strides he had made into the Black.

There was no sense of passing through any threshold, no gradual return of sensation from back to front as he passed out of the wild shadow magic. He suddenly went from total sensory depravation to total sensory overload. What had been a gentle mist a moment ago now felt like a swirling, intense wind that weighed ten million pounds crushing him like the bottom of the sea. The formerly almost total blackness of the night now seemed bright enough to stab out his over-dilated eyes, like walking from a dark corridor to a bright hearth but with no direction to look away from it. The smell was intense- choking, thick and foul and he gagged his first breath, he took only shallow, barely changing the air in his lungs. The sound was the worst, the painfully loud noise abusing his ears so fiercely that individual sounds could not be distinguished.

It was like his senses had strained themselves in the dark, as if every single sense in his body had been reaching out at superhuman levels in the Black. It had only been a short time, less that half a minute for sure, but Dirk concluded that the Black must be so deep that it had de-acclimated his body to normal sensation even in that brief moment. There was a tremendous crash next to him that shook him to the core, but at that moment he couldn't tell whether it was truly something massive, or if this was just his oversensitive body reacting to perhaps a slight breeze. As the pain of daily experience settled back on his bones, Dirk straightened from the bent position he had unthinkingly curled into and looked over at his daughter, still gripping tightly on her hand.

There was only blue. Dirk could not focus. In the bottom of his peripheral vision he saw the shape of his left forearm and muscled craftsman's hand holding a much slighter and younger though still work calloused hand. That hand was attached to an arm that seemed oddly to hang, and where it should be attached to his fourteen year old daughter was only blue.

Dirk felt confusion, his brain providing questions at a million miles an hour and his senses providing answers at a glacial pace. He stood, hurting. In the cacophony of noises more intense than he had ever heard in his shadow-shrouded village a creaking and groaning as if the ground itself were complaining about the weight. Dirk felt the ground move under him, as if he were drunk, and the blue column before him shifted. It was rising. Rising to reveal the deep grey fog, much brighter to his oversensitive eyes, but still he could make no sense of the shadowed figures that moved in the distance. He turned his torso to look back, some instinctive horror and pain keeping his feet planted. The column of blue was the leg of a massive figure, already slowly lumbering into the obscuring fog.

Never in his life had Dirk seen a thing as big as that. And a moment later another crash fell to his right, nearly shaking him over.