When Melthaine awoke, she did so in Ellyrie´s arms and immediately noticed her laboured breath.

"You don't need to carry me! El, please" Melthaine squirmed, enough to break Ellyrie´s hold. Standing on her own two feet she looked around at the scenery around them.

It had gone dark, the skies hidden under thick black clouds. Strikes of lightning here and there brought light, followed by a roaring thunder and ceaseless rain. But more than any of this, Melthaine stared at Ellyrie.

She was near her limit, struggling to stand on her feet, utterly drenched. "You couldn't really move on your own." Ellyrie´s voice was little more than a whisper. "And we couldn't stay up there without cover or security, we'd just be asking for trouble. Although." She followed Melthaines gaze around them. "This entire place seems bereft of, well, everything."

They stood truly in the middle of nowhere. Not even a slight hill was visible on the horizon.

"Even if nobody comes for us, this cold will." Melthaine was shaking. "The Landsea is always in motion, there is no telling where we could find shelter." Her laughter was one of despair.

Ellyrie had her eyes set, staring off into the distance. "Over there." She spoke quietly, pointing in the direction. "I saw something."

Melthaine followed her direction. When lightning struck again she could see it, a reflection. "Well, it is not like we have many options." She stuck close to Ellyrie, partially for warmth, partially to help her stand upright.

They walked in silence, until Ellyrie found the strength to ask: "When I looked at her. Demadara, I mean. She, shone. In such an awful way."

"Yes." Melthaine gritted her teeth. "She is one of her chosen. The woman in white. They stop being people, and become." She paused and laid a hand on her throat. "Something else. That someone like her holds the essence of Entu makes me fear for the survival of this world."

She looked up to Ellyrie´s face, and sighed. "I'm sorry. Entu and Rana were the greatest heroes of the olden times. Me and my siblings looked up to them greatly. When she." Her face turned sour. "Decided to end the world, they were the ones who stood up to her, the only ones who did. And now one of her spawn carries his very essence like a plaything." Her body was trembling, not from the cold.

"She, Ser-" Ellyrie rose to speak, but Melthaine laid a finger on her lips.

"Do not say her name. It is an invitation. One she rarely resists."

Ellyrie swallowed hard and nodded. "The woman in white, wanted to destroy the world? Why, why would she do such a thing?"

Melthaine´s laughter was shrill and void of joy, quickly degenerating into coughing. "You cannot ask that harlot for 'why', El. Perhaps she had a great plan, perhaps she was simply in a bad mood. Your histories have many awful names and condemnations of me and my siblings, those who we lead in old times. All of them ring true with her."

Their path finally lead them to the source of the reflections. Long ago it may have been a battlefield, but now it was little more than a grave. suits of armour littered the ground, as well as still, unarmoured bodies. The reflection had come from their weapons, which had been thrust into the ground near their presumed late owners.

Ellyrie leaned down to inspect the dead, holding onto the shaft of a spear for support. The state of the armaments did not betray any age or time they had laid there. Immaculate and without a spot of rust or dents, the only sign of how long they had been laying here were the skeletal remains within.

Above the shoulder Ellyrie found a sigil brandished within the metal. Immediately she rose back to her feet and grasped her sword. "We should leave."

Melthaine stared back at her. "I see and feel nothing living here, yes it is unsettling but." She pointed forward. Across the field of death and glory laid a little forest upon a hill. "We could seek shelter there, and I fear you wont make it that far."

"I wont make it through this field either, Mel." Ellyrie still stared down upon the insignia. Two blades, upright. "These belonged to the second imperial legion. In the histories they were called the undying." She prodded one of the unarmoured corpses near them. "And these are fresh."

"It has been long that one has remembered us. State your name, so that I may remember it after you have left this world."

The voice cracked the air, a dark, metallic tone. The flashes of lightning illuminated a suit of gilded armour, lights within the helmet glowing as it walked towards them.

"Has she then found out that I yet live? Has your imperator heard me cursing her name every night, for two hundred and fifty years?" It gripped a sword from the ground, light coursing from the hilt towards the tip. "Too cowardly, or too busy to finish me off herself?"

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"We are not with the empire" Ellyrie rose her blade, it shook within her grasp. "I am Ellyrie. I served the empire, just like you. And I, lost, everything, much like you, Sir Levion."

He stopped in his tracks. "Levion. Yes, that was my name. How would you know it? My end was long ago, has Aeterna not buried any trace of it?"

"No. She hasn't." Ellyrie shook her head. "Within the histories as we are taught, you are the first traitor-general, whose rebellion in a crucial moment halted the expansion of the empire. They remember you, in infamy."

Levion stared at the ground, his armour rattling. "Traitor, rebel. A hundred years of service, a hundred years of war, for nothing. Less than nothing." He rammed the sword back into the ground, the light within his helmet growing brighter. "She called us rebels? Look upon them, my boys, my daughters." He spreads arms. "Is this the end of an army of traitors?"

The rains grew worse, the lightning shedding light upon the field. Ellyrie saw what he meant. All the armoured corpses laid face down in the ground, arrows stuck within their backs.

"For ten years we campaigned through these lands. 'Campaigned', what a farce." Levion´s voice roiled with anger. "What was there to conquer, cities of tents? They simply walk away! No precious resources, no iron, only land, land without end, and did we not already have enough? No, Aeterna said, more of us had to die, more had to be entombed in their armour so she could colour more parts of her damn map!"

He stepped closer. Levion towered over them, but now his body was hunched forward. "We were ready to die for her and her empire, but not for this madness. And I told her this. That we would not march further. Saw her face twist, all that kind warmth gone within an instant as she stormed out."

"To find the blackguards, right?" Ellyrie muttered, struggling to meet his gaze.

"Butchers." Levion´s fingers clenched. "We were fending of an attack when they came, we thought to our aid. They darkened the sky, and did not stop until nobody was left. Nobody but me." He reached up to his shoulders, where two holes showed the hollow dark within. "Their chains turned to rust over the decades. I have stayed here since, to watch over mine own."

"So you have seen Aeterna for the usurper that she is." Melthaine finally spoke. "We too have suffered from her, as are your people. I understand your grief, your want to safeguard your comrades. But would you not join us?"

His laughter was as metallic as it was hollow. "The three of us, breaking down the gates of Goliath. I commend your spirit. Of course."

Melthaine blinked a few times. "You, agree?"

"Of course I do." He pulled a spear from the ground and shouldered it, like the sword before it began to faintly glow in the same golden colour as the light making up his eyes. "I stayed to safeguard my fallen comrades, but also because I did not know how to proceed. I was a general, but at heart I was a soldier, giving orders is not in my blood like following them is. And if you made it all the way here then you must have a plan, no?"

Ellyrie and Melthaine looked at each other. "We are heading east, we can explain." Melthaine could no longer ignore how much her body was trembling. "But first, shelter."

The two were close to their limit, once they reached the relative safety of the trees they collapsed in on each other.

Levion stood beside them, the rain hitting against his flawless gilded armour. "My apologies. In all this time I've forgotten the limitations of people who still breathe."

He gathered what little wood he could find, stacking it in a neat pile. From his left gauntlet emitted a flame, setting the wood alight. Ellyrie and Melthaine dragged themselves closer, while Ellyrie was staring across Levion´s armour. "I never thought I would see weapons of the golden age this close."

"If our time is now known as a golden age, then I fear for what life is like back home." He shook his helmet. "Pray, how is life back in the empire now?"

His words were a string that closed down Ellyrie´s throat. It took her great strength to push past, and to tell him of their story.

Throughout all of it Levion stayed silent, staring into the fire. "That is what we fought for." He finally spoke. "For her to step over all of us and declare herself a god. I wont rest until I've buried my sword in her heart." His hand surged to the sheath at his left. "If she even still has one."

"If she ever had one." Melthaine muttered, her eyes reflecting the flames between them. "She has been alive for over four hundred years now, has she not? And still she looks like a young princess."

"I never did trust those shadowy figures that went in and out of her palace." Levion let go of his blade. "Parsae and her schemes, that butcher Manticore and all the others. She never seemed different, though maybe I was simply too close to notice until it was too late."

Those who seek to live forever generally find a way, they simply fail to walk it forever." Melthaine wrapped her arms around her knees. "Like the dragons they devour until even the meekest of sheep resists and they tear each other apart."

"Dragons?" Ellyrie leaned her head to the side, a motion copied by Levion.

"Beasts that dwelled on this world long ago, after me and my siblings were weakened." Melthaine closed her eyes. "They carved the world into their domains, and warred each other until nothing and no one was left."

"And you did not stop them, or could not?" Levion looked at her. "The armies of your brother Elthaine were some of the worst we had to face."

"Oh we wanted to, and I did. I slew one of their elders myself, a silver-scaled one by the name or Daraos. And I paid the price for it. I took from the woman in white, and she took from me. My power, my domain, my very memories." Melthaine stared down at her hands.

"Those monsters were her favourite."