Ash struggled to avoid patrols of mounted soldiers as he passed from rocky hills into the rich greens of the Radiance. In the day’s fading light, he fought the impulse to stop and marvel at the lush landscape or the soldier’s mounts. Most were female dreshens with knobby horns on their heads. But the occasional officer rode by on a stag with thick antlers.

Guard towers dotted the forest’s edge, the soldiers atop them obviously watching for any signs of Ostelan activity. During his trek through the southern reaches of the Gambler’s Mountains, Ash had easily avoided the occasional Ostelan patrol. The savage mountain dwellers had keen senses but no discipline. A palisade wall with evenly spaced ramparts was a flurry of activity to the north, presided over by the Shield. He drilled troops in the day’s fading light as Ash snuck past.

Ash reached the town of Westerbrook at night. His coal-black cowl was down, bathing his silvery hair in the moon’s rich glow. With one hand, he pulled up the hood while his other tugged a drawstring on the right flap of his cloak. That half of the garment cinched closed, concealing his lurker brigandine and the sword at his hip. He stalked to the edge of the forest, silent as a hunting owl despite his large frame.

Wisplights in sconces fought the darkness from their mountings atop the town’s robust stockade. The guards stood at ease upon the barrier with their backs to the light lest they ruin their night vision. A wisp bundle hung on either side of the closed gates. The crystallized insects shone white, driving back the shadows nearly to the treeline.

Asking for magic with an almost unconscious thought, Ash transmuted his body into a cloud of smoke. He billowed across the open ground between forest and town, staying well outside the wisp light. The magic had never been denied him, but still he had to ask permission to use it. There was an unspoken threat. If Ash didn’t please his master, he could be stripped of his power.

He slipped through thin cracks in the wooden stockade without any sign of alarm. The guards were alert, no surprise so far from what might be considered civilization, but Ash was already calculating where to deploy his forces once they had gathered.

Skeletons, gravelings, and Untamed with packs of slaghounds marched across the Ashen Lands, slow but steady. He could feel them, three moon’s journey behind him. Alone, they were no more than a thorn in the Radiance’s foot, and he knew it. Still, they would be more than enough to overwhelm Westerbrook and gain a foothold in these soft green lands.

Others had thrown their armies against the Radiance and failed. Edore the Fallen, fae king in exile, had harried the Radiance for a century, only making them stronger. Battlemother Sineck’s army had been routed by a single hob, and her painstakingly crafted golem had plunged into the choppy Tornilen River.

It’ll be different this time, said Krachnis, the entity which shared part of Ash’s mind. Edore was a fool. Sineck put too much confidence in the golem I helped her create. The hob who defeated her is here. Find him. He will make a powerful ally.

From Ash’s earliest memories, Krachnis had been a part of him. Krachnis had never identified himself beyond giving a name, but he had raised Ash and tutored him in dark magic, gifting Ash the master stone he wore around his neck and with it, the power to control the dead. When he had been a child, alone in the Ashen Lands, Krachnis had named him after that barren land. Ash had learned to trust Krachnis’ knowledge of the world. Without him, Ash wouldn’t have survived in the Ashen Lands, let alone have conquered them.

But like all children, Ash had begun to rebel.

Master, surely such a land cannot be as corrupt as you say. Ash directed his thoughts to the part of his mind occupied by Krachnis. These lands are rich with resources. The Ashen Lands could be a veritable paradise with a fraction of this wilderness and wildlife.

You’re too naive. You shall learn their sins soon enough and understand our conquest as a mercy.

Ash rematerialized in the dark alley between a tavern and candlemaker’s shop. A nearby window reflected his pale face. It was chiseled into angles too hard for one who had only recently considered himself a man. Hunger would have left his face sunken. Abuse would have broken it and left it haunted. Ash’s face had been sculpted by hardships overcome.

After once more asking for access to Krachnis’ magic, he shrouded himself in shadows. Rats chittered in the alley’s darkest nooks. They ate food scraps in hurried bursts, raising their heads every few seconds, ears alert for noise and red eyes scanning for threats. Ash entered their minds, drawing upon the master stone’s ability to control such weak creatures. Unlike Krachnis’ power, Ash didn’t need permission to use the master stone. A few simple commands later and his spies scattered to glean information.

Nothing more than a shadow amongst shadows, he waited beside the tavern’s thick wooden walls. Soft music vibrated the windows with percussive shouts for more food and drink. He turned inward, seeing through the rats’ eyes.

In a small part of his mind, he scampered to the side of the town’s dirt lanes and slipped through a crack in the guardhouse wall. Thick meaty stew simmered over a small stove. Swords, axes, a few maces, and a single halberd reflected the room’s wisplight from racks against one wall.

A trio of guards, two human and one burrower, sat on stools with pipes clenched between their teeth, filling the narrow room with a thick cloud of sweet smoke. The youngest human coughed after inhaling deeply upon his pipe.

“Lad still hasn’t gotten used to my homegrown tabac!” the burrower said, slapping the youth on the back.

Ash studied the burrower through rat eyes. One of the ancient races, burrowers respected no borders, populating cities underground and inside mountains. This creature seemed almost human except for his half-height and rockskin, which had a slate hue as if dusted with a fine powder.

Corruptible. Arrogant. Stubborn. Their thick skin hides other weaknesses. Fult dren gu losh ted nilene roulfros.

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As it often did, Krachnis spoke in forgotten languages. Its memory stretched the ages, as fathomless as the sky.

In another part of Ash’s mind, a rat wandered the streets, splashing through refuse in a gutter then listening to idle chatter as two shopkeepers closed for the night. They stood outside in the light of multicolored wisp bundles hung to hooks outside their shops.

“Finish that order for Bandruí Gale?” a thick man wearing a butcher’s apron asked.

“She’ll pick it up tomorrow though I’ll never understand why she doesn’t mend her clothes herself,” a plump woman answered, broom in hand, sweeping it across the stoop of her shop as if it were besieged by demons.

“Too busy healing another of Goodwife Natty’s stubbed toes, no doubt.” The butcher chuckled and tossed a pail of bloody water into the ditch where Ash’s rat crouched.

“The Goodwife’s a handful. There’s a bit of Unmaker in her to be sure, but she’s one of my best customers, so I’ll hear none of that talk.”

Ash kept a thread of his attention there, but allowed his mind to wander amongst his troop of spies. One rat climbed through a hole in a wall, tucked itself beneath hay in a stableyard, and listened to a stablehand’s complaints. Another rat ran straight into the path of a grommel’s wide foot, giving Ash a quick glimpse of what appeared to be a furry mound pulling a cart. He severed his connection to the rat lest he waste time staring at dirt through the animal’s crushed body.

These people seem so...ordinary. I see none of this corruption you teach, Master.

A single moon has eclipsed since you left our lands, and already you are an expert? Patience.

The busiest part of Ash’s mind infiltrated the tavern beside which he stood. Mud-crusted boots filled the rat’s vision as it scampered across a floor splattered with beer and strewn with sawdust in equal parts. The rat left clear signs of its passage for any sober enough to notice, but there were few of that type to worry about. Amidst chatter about local politics and shouts for food, Ash caught a thread of conversation worth his full attention.

Entering the rat more fully had a single but important downside. His true body was more vulnerable. But with his glamor about him, townsfolk could walk past him in the alley and never notice him. Ash sent his mind into the rat, and with a twitch of his nose, he scurried across the floor in a ramshackle way, only stumbling once when he splashed through spilled ale.

“The hero of Shrivemount here in our town?” asked a woman. “Are you sure?” Seen from below the table, the speaker was nothing more than a pretty bit of ankle and well-crafted rabbit fur boots.

“No, but that’s what my Pa said.” Another voice belonged to muscular legs and nearly identical boots, though much larger and well worn. “He’s a peculiar hob, hero or not.”

“Is he handsome? I’ve always fancied large men. And heroes.” The woman’s comment had hooks, and the man swallowed them all, dangling helplessly on her line as she slowly reeled him in.

“He charges a toll to cross his bridge but only sometimes,” the man said. “Doesn’t ask riddles, either. The stories all say the hobs used to ask riddles.”

“Well, that’s okay,” the woman said as a matter of fact. “Only bards put much stock in riddles.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” the man crooned. If the woman wasn’t already his lover, Ash suspected she soon would be if the man had his way.

“You gonna tell me what he does?”

“Wanted you to ask is all.” The satisfaction in the man’s voice made rat-Ash chitter in annoyance and disgust. The fool sought to control the conversation and actually believed he was turning it back in his favor. He would spend his life doing everything a woman wanted and thinking it was his own idea. “He plays a game.”

“That’s new!”

“Don’t you want to know what kind?” the man asked.

“That’s okay. I assume it’s cards or dice.”

“You’d be wrong,” the man said, a taunt seeping into his words.

“That’s okay too.” If the woman could control a battlefield as well as she did this foolish man, Ash would have considered making her a general.

The man tapped his foot, waiting for the woman to ask a question she never would.

“Blast you. If you’re not a whole heap of Unmaker trouble, then I’m a burrower’s cousin,” he said, his words tumbling out in a frustrated pile. “It’s a magic game played on a board.”

Giggling, the woman said, “I’m Maker through and through.” After a long moment of silence, just as Ash was about to turn his attention elsewhere, the woman finally added, “Might have a bit of Unmaker in me.”

Ash had never considered such a trivial use for magic. With the master stone around his neck, he could raise the dead–only humans, despite his best efforts to reanimate other races, but his powers parted the veil between life and death. The wisp stones in a pouch secured on his distant body allowed him to teleport any distance with a thought. Not to mention the powers Krachnis offered him, and he merely had to ask.

Nations would tremble at his army’s approach. These civilized druí would be no challenge if they spent their time making entertainments. Still, as he listened to the man describing the game to his companion, Ash had to admit he was intrigued. He had never played a game.

Vague memories of his life before the Ashen Lands disagreed. Sensations surfaced but slipped through his fingers like reflections on water. Laughing voices, the rush of wind on his face, and arms encircling him quickly but with great care. As always happened at such times, Krachnis seared away other thoughts with a voice akin to bone scratching across a tombstone.

What need for a past? The future waits with glories in hand. Seize them. Cover the lands with death.

Ash didn’t agree and shielded his thoughts from Krachnis before he turned his attention back to his other rats.

One of his spies had tracked a course through Westerbrook to the far eastern walls. It ducked through a crack in the palisade at Ash’s command. Concentrating all his attention on the rat, a bowlegged runt missing half its tail, he raced through blades of grass silvered by the moon. An owl’s hoot sent him jumping into a thick bush. Insects vied with thick trees to infuse the night with creaks while a hive of kilkentith sweetened the night with their mating songs. Water rustled and sighed like a child dreaming of heroic adventures. The rat approached a stone bridge spanning a gulch, and Ash lost his connection. Something upon the bridge was canceling magic.

He needed time to consider what he had learned. Tomorrow he would confront the Hero of Shrivemount.