ACT 1

-- Maia Ilyas --

Chapter 1

Where am I?

The question lingered unanswered as she stood upon a precipice and gazed upon a seemingly endless expanse of darkness. Her breath formed tendrils of mist in the cool night and she shivered and wrapped her cloak tightly around her body.

What is happening here?                                                         

She vaguely recalled a flurry of blades and the splatter of hot visceral gore. Nightmarish creatures charged forward with chilling screams while noble warriors battled desperately in a vain attempt to stem the tide, a flickering light in a sea of darkness soon to be extinguished forevermore.

A single tear trickled down her cheek and was followed closely by another as a heavy sorrow fell upon her.

“Why do you weep?”

The words came unbidden and she turned to face the source of the words. A crimson flame manifested before her and revealed the figure of a man whose face remained shrouded by the darkness that surrounded them.

“Who are you?” she demanded sharply, her nervousness betrayed by the quiver in her tone.

The man did not appear to speak but his voice echoed through her mind once again, “Your time has not yet come, daughter of the Halar.”

“Show yourself!” she hissed even as her hands sought the reassuring hilts of her weapons but to no avail.

“In due time,” the man whispered aloud for the first time, his voice low and authoritative as he gestured towards her and summoned the impenetrable night to engulf her whole before she could even muster a scream.

She let out a wordless gasp and reached out to shield her face against the onrushing tide. However, her fingers only brushed against a rough texture like leather. Startled by the unexpected sensation, she instinctively withdrew her hands and felt the darkness weigh upon her.

What is happening here? The question came to mind again and she reached out tentatively to feel the same rough texture above her. A nagging suspicion began to form and, after a third and final touch, she pulled away the covering without further hesitation. 

She shuddered reflexively after a cool residue fell upon her and recognized it as snow after a moment of befuddlement. Brushing the shifting snow off, she then pushed herself up and grimaced when a brilliant glare promptly greeted her.

Where is the stranger?

She looked around in confusion after her eyes acclimatized to the sunlight and found tall pine trees in the vicinity. The mysterious man had disappeared and she wondered whether she had imagined him and just awakened. Her mind then turned to her location and she struggled to recall the reason for her presence within a conifer forest.

She whispered the forest’s name softly as her memories began to return to her in a rapid flurry, “Yser.” She was in the Yser, having been assigned there by the Ordos Hyvanna for…

Her mission…

She started in alarm and extricated herself from the tarpaulin that concealed her. The bewilderment of her present circumstances dissipated as she gradually regained full control over her faculties and remembered all of the events that had transpired.

The pain erupted a moment later, an agonizing reminder that she was alive. She somehow managed to force back the instinctive scream as she recalled the creature that caused her such pain and the other hellspawn that haunted the Yser. It would be a disaster if she revealed her location prematurely to the abominations that prowled the wild while she was in a weak state.

With a small grunt, she pushed herself up and tried to ignore the impulses of pain that shot up her left arm. She noted that the bloody wound on her shoulder remained open and gritted her teeth in concern. The wound would undoubtedly fester if she left it untreated for too long and to compound matters, it also throbbed with a strange intensity that magnified the agony she felt at certain intervals.

She rummaged through the pouch at her belt and pulled out a minor healing potion. However, she returned it to the bag reluctantly after a further search through her bag revealed that the vial in her hand was her last. With her current resources, there was little she could about the pain except to travel to the nearest town and seek out their medical supplies.

That was likely to be a tall order. She was alone, hungry and weary with little awareness or knowledge of her current location. Her guides were nowhere to be seen and most likely dead given yesterday’s events. She also lacked a map or compass that she could navigate with and identify the shortest route to civilization.

She let out a sigh of lamentation and clutched her injured shoulder tightly as the pain flared up once again. With a curse directed at the beast that inflicted the wound, she kicked a clump of snow away only to notice a glint beneath the wrinkled tarpaulin that had concealed her.

She stooped down and pushed the thick material away to reveal a blade half-buried by the snow. Its edge was caked in dried blood but gleamed upon her touch, as if the runeblade acknowledged its wielder. “Aliar,” she whispered gratefully as she pulled it from the snow and noticed an identical blade buried nearby.

“Avitlier,” she murmured and sheathed Aliar at her belt before she picked the second blade up reverently. She clutched its hilt tightly, its familiar weight and balance providing her some comfort, and wished desperately that she could wield its twin simultaneously. Unfortunately, that was unlikely to be the case with her left arm hanging uselessly at her side.

“You had best take care of these beauties, Maia, Isma and I both went through a lot of trouble requisitioning them for you!”

The memory came unbidden as did the tears that soon streamed down her cheeks in an unstoppable tide. "How did it come to this?" she questioned bitterly and reminisced about the events that had brought her to this accursed place.

It had begun with a request from her mentor, the Grand Maester Noah Rosenberg. An investigative mission to the Yser, the great forest that bordered the Anthien autonomous region, triggered by a request from the governor of its eponymous city, one Hanna Gremis, after her attempts to seek help from the Daim Imperium that had nominal authority over the land ended in failure.

Anthien and the Yser were positioned in the far north, some two hundred leagues from the Imperial capital of Dai’vyaz, and were harsh lands beneath the shadows of the Daimyar mountain range that featured freezing temperatures, hostile wildlife and thinly spread resources. It was common knowledge that the Imperium had never bothered to annex the region in full but delegated administrative authority to the hardy souls that inhabited those lands, hence it was of little surprise that they had ignored Hanna’s pleas for help.

No, what surprised Maia was the fact that her order, the Ordos Hyvanna, decided to intervene. She thought it perilously close to interference in the affairs of another sovereign nation. In addition, the decision to send her became more perplexing once one considered her lineage as a child of Corinthos and Aesir heritage whose blood kin were currently engaged in wars against the Imperium.

But who was she to argue? She was a newly graduated Grand Magus with zero experience and could hardly disobey if Noah, who sat upon Hyvanna’s ruling council and acted as her mentor and guardian for the past six years, determined her mission.

And what a mission it was. Hanna claimed that whole towns and villages in the north had vanished with the few survivors found babbling of horrors in the darkness, which fit a description known to all of Hyvanna.

Demonkin.

The ancient enemy that had long been banished beyond the realms of men, spoken only in weathered tomes and the deranged texts of mad prophets. Few still believed in their existence, with her friend and escort Hunter Isma amongst them while his peer Tidar was a vocal skeptic with his Daim background valuing empirical evidence above all.

The three of them – Maia, Tidar and Isma – had many debates on the matter throughout their journey to Le Saville, a town to the north east of Anthien where the most sightings had been reported. She originally believed that all arguments were inconclusive but now it was clear to her that all of the naysayers were erroneous in their belief.

Now is not the time for regrets.

With that thought, Maia shook herself out of her reverie and pulled clear of the tarpaulin. Her instincts told her to move quickly before the enemy detected her but the heavy snowfall would make tracking her easy. One of the lessons Tidar had taught her came to mind and she tied the tarpaulin around her waist and checked that the material would wipe clean any tracks that she made in the snow as it swept in her wake. Though she doubted that the enemy relied solely on their eyesight to track her, she was not about to make it easier for them by leaving clear imprints behind for them to follow.

The Yser remained eerily silent and devoid of the slightest hint of life while the sky remained overcast despite her chronometer indicating that it was early in the morning. She could not help but think of them as portents of doom, an ill omen for the times ahead, but she forced aside the thoughts and focused on the path. If she had recalled correctly, the town of Le Saville had been some sixty kilometers to the north east where they had last stopped and she doubted that Isma could have borne her all that far after she had been knocked unconscious during that first frenzied encounter.

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Using the shrouded sun to fix her direction, she trudged slowly towards her destination with the heavy but necessary tarpaulin dragging behind her. Her eyes scanned the woods carefully in search of shadows in the distance that could well indicate the presence of others alongside her.

For a moment, she wondered if her comrades could have survived but her instinct and logic resurfaced to deny her hopes. There was just too many of the monstrosities from yesterday’s ambush for them to have fought off and Tidar was almost certainly dead after what that foul creature did to him.

She had failed him.

Maia covered her eyes with her hand and tried to stop the surge of emotions that was welling up within her. However, she failed miserably and was soon sobbing again as her emotions spilled over. It was her very first mission and she had already lost one comrade with the second missing and most likely dead.

After several seconds, she managed to regain her composure after her rationality reasserted itself and reminded her that she remained in an untenable situation. There would be time enough to mourn later, and perhaps Isma could even be alive, Halar willing.

Just as she resolved her mind, an otherworldly scream abruptly rent the silence and almost caused her to jump. She glanced around in fear as she sought out the source of the scream when she heard a second cry that sent her blood running cold.

The war cry echoed across the woods and put an end to the once-ominous silence. Maia swore and scrabbled at the knot that bound the tarpaulin around the waist. The time for stealth was over and she sighed in relief as the canvas finally fell with a soft thud onto the snow. Her eyes then darted around in search for the imminent attack and when the first shadow finally emerged, it was all she could do to stop from smiting the culprit with a well-placed bolt.

A wild-eyed Daim Myrmidon, distinguishable by the tattered remains of his uniform, burst forth from the mist. Maia gaped in shock and a moment of mutual recognition passed between the both of them as he too caught sight of her. He was one of the escorts assigned to her by the Daim and was present at the camp the night of the ambush. For a moment, she considered calling out to him for news of Isma but he began gesticulating wildly and resumed his run.

Seconds later, a powerful fiend barreled into the clearing and issued a fearsome scream that reverberated throughout the entire forest. Its flat reptilian face wore a cruel grin and its dark yellow eyes gleamed with bloodlust, but most terrifying of all was the bloody cleaver it wielded at its side. She remembered the fiend’s ilk from the ambush yesterday – seven foot monstrosities with dark hued skin the color of granite, impressively muscular builds and a distasteful fondness for adorning themselves with the remains of their victims.

This particular monster wore gaping human skulls on the spikes that adorned its mantle. It brandished its blade aloft as it called for its brethren but hesitated when it caught sight of Maia. She froze for a single moment, a mistake which she instantly regretted.

It screamed in its unearthly language yet again, but she could somehow sense a different connotation underlying its latest cry even as she turned to run. Her heart pounded wildly and she willed it to not give out on her. Adrenaline was fueling her every step now, the basic urge for survival wiping away all of the exhaustion she felt earlier.

A voice in her mind clamored for vengeance but she pushed it aside as she heard her pursuers close. Avitlier was held ready at her side and its edge pulsed wildly in an apparent reflection of its master’s condition. Maia was glad of its reassuring weight in her hand, all the more so when a fiend emerged abruptly from the mist.

It looked almost as startled as she felt but she reacted first and lashed out with Avitlier. The slash tore through the demon’s throat and sent it slumping away as it clawed helplessly at the wound that rapidly pumped out its filthy black blood. However, Maia’s left shoulder promptly burst with fresh pain and caused her to grit her teeth as the force of the agony nearly sent her stumbling to the ground. Her mind spun for the briefest of seconds and failed to register the rapidly approaching shade until it was too late.

Two hundred pounds of mass muscle smashed into her and sent her flying into space like a skittle before she landed onto the soft snow that carpeted the entirety of the Yser. Her vision wavered and her surroundings flickered between abject darkness and the overcast sky above the Yser as she struggled to her feet. Her assailant bellowed triumphantly and charged again with a cruel grin etched upon its lips.

“Halar give me strength,” she prayed aloud and raised a trembling hand towards the monster while mustering what little mana she had left. The fiend let out a scream and pounced just as she manifested a swirling mist and unleashed it at the onrushing fiend.

Within seconds, icy tendrils began to fester all across the demon’s form like a quick working plague before disintegrating into a thousand miniscule pieces immediately, taking with it appendages and chunks of the beast’s torso. The beast screamed not in pain – the ice had quickly numbed its nerves even as it took apart its form – but with a dreadful realization of its doom.

In a last act of defiance, it reached out for her. Its hand had almost grasped Maia’s throat when it finally disintegrated as her spell completed its demise.

She staggered backwards and took deep breaths to steady her heart which was by now pounding frantically. Her aching body pleaded for a long rest but she could hear the howls in the distance and knew the remnants of her pursuers would not be far. A fresh wave of nausea and pain wracked her and almost caused her to black out, so she fumbled around the pouch belted to her side and pulled out the last potion within.

Swigging the bitter liquid down in a single gulp, Maia shuddered as she felt a warm surge of energy flow through her entirety and numbed the pain she felt slightly. She then tossed the emptied vial away and inhaled slowly. The knowledge that she was now without any means of replenishment caused her to feel a momentary despair but she quickly pushed the self-pitying thoughts aside and tried to consider her options.

The howls grew closer and she could hear the dry crack of fallen branches as they were trampled underfoot. Her refreshed muscles were put to work as she ran away from those fell cries, no longer having the luxury of time to fix her direction.

She heard the distinctive twang of a loosed bow in the distance and threw herself down. The arrow struck a nearby pine and quivered wildly, indicative of the force with which the projectile had been launched. She shuddered involuntarily at the thought of one of those arrows striking her and scrambled to her feet when a second arrow slammed into the powdery snow nearby.

A third narrowly missed her legs as she hurdled over a dead log. Maia swore and flung a magic missile blindly over her back, not bothering to check whether it struck true while a fourth arrow slammed home into the pine overhead.

She sought out the densest part of the woods for cover but to her dismay the tree line seemed to be receding. In a matter of minutes, the demon archers would have a clean bead on her without the woods impairing their aim and all the while, the screams drew closer. It was more of the powerful fiends, judging by the sound of their cries, and her heart promptly sank.

Was she just outrunning the inevitable?

An open expanse greeted her abruptly as she burst past a copse of dying trees and found herself at the edge of a massive lake. Its surface had been frozen solid, which was hardly surprising given the perpetual chill that permeated the Yser, and the meager sunlight that escaped the overcast sky above reflected off the ice and lent the scene a sense of tranquility.

However, the brief moment of peace was shattered when two fiends burst out of the forest beside her. Maia gritted her teeth and made to flee but the nearest beast, moving at a speed she once thought impossible for a creature its size, lumbered forward. It brandished its crude mace wildly and forced her backwards, effectively cutting off her left flank.

She swore as she stumbled but managed to retain her footing while the beast gave her a mocking sneer. Its peer lurked behind with its yellow eyes trained solely on her, which Maia found even more unnerving. Neither seemed particularly anxious to attack her in contrast with her previous experience but she could not help but be thankful for the short respite even as she analyzed the options available to her.

Her relief soon vanished when another pair of demons emerged into the open. The first was another fiend that was similar to those she had combated thus far but the second was a new creature that she remembered all too well from that fateful night.

It was lean and muscular unlike the broader and bulkier fiends. Where feral rage burned within the eyes of the fiends, a cool intelligence glimmered in the pitiless yellow eyes of the newcomer. Its angular face twisted into a sneer as it hissed words in the hideous sounding tongue of the demonkin to its lesser brethren that promptly advanced slowly on her with their motley weapons drawn.

She returned its sneer with an icy stare, trying desperately to conceal the fear she felt within or the rage that burned hotly within her towards the new demon’s master. She could still remember its kindred surrounding the bastard demon that had murdered Tidar. If she were to wager a guess as to their function, she would have said that they were a kind of honor guard.

Regrettably, vengeance for the fallen would have to keep considering that her very survival was at stake. There was little doubt as to her fate should she allow herself to be captured by the approaching demons.

With a final prayer of absolution, she decided to make her move and dashed towards the lake and away from the startled demons that had not anticipated such an action. Howling loudly in chagrin and confusion, they rushed forward only to skid on the slippery ice and two fell heavily after losing their footing.

Issuing a silent prayer of thanks, she continued her dash across the lake and winced as she heard the beginnings of a crack from the frozen surface of the lake beneath her. “Don’t break on me now,” she muttered beneath her breath and willed to ice to hold firm. Unfortunately, her mana was almost depleted and she could no longer spare any to stabilize the surface she currently strode on.

The fiends had already picked themselves up and continued their frenetic pursuit of her, their bloodlust overcoming all caution. The lean demon exhorted its kindred forward with sharp barks, its footing sure compared to the clumsy behemoths.

The surface continued to crack ominously, and Maia very nearly slipped, but managed to catch her balance at the last second. Out of breath and with her stamina dwindling rapidly, she realized bitterly that there was little chance she could escape her predicament without resorting to desperate measures.

Maia abruptly turned on her heel and deliberately leapt backwards to slide back-first across the lake, A shaft of pain momentarily burst through her nerves as her body collided with the cold ice but she ignored it and mustered what little mana she possessed and targeted the nearest fiends.

Miasma erupted from her hand and engulfed the foremost fiends, deep freezing them in an instant. A third fiend fell heavily and bawled in terror when its arm broke apart into miniscule fragments of ice. However, much to her dismay, the lean demon had survived and it rushed forward to press its attack followed closely by the last of the surviving fiends.

She rushed to regain her footing, cursing as she slipped several times and managed to raise her runeblade to block a downward blow that would have claimed her head. The ice below her cracked again, an ominous sound to her ears. Grunting in pain, she kicked the lean demon in the gut and sent it sprawling on the ice.

The Grand Magus then looked around only to see a dull great sword sweeping towards her. She let loose a cry of surprise, her reflexes guiding her to leap backwards and avoid the thrust meant for her neck.

The fiend howled in frustration and raised its sword overhead for another attempt on her life. Maia sidestepped its clumsy swing but lost her footing temporarily when the demon’s sword crashed upon the fragile surface and she realized in alarm what would happen next.

The entire sheet of ice that had enveloped the lake split asunder. Both surviving demons and Maia fell into the icy waters below, the nerves throughout their body crackling into frenzied activity with the freezing temperatures.

Maia gasped as she burst out of the water, somehow managing to grab onto a passing block of ice. The demons on the other hand howled in terror as they sank into the depths below. Their heavy armor had sealed their fate, but she was hardly inclined to be sympathetic to them.

Calling upon the last of her reserves, Maia hauled herself up onto the ice before collapsing into a heap. Her body trembled with the chill and she knew that she needed to warm herself quickly before frostbite took her. The irony of an ice mage dying to the frost was not lost on her, but no amount of magic could compensate for the weakness of the flesh. She was no elemental as to thrive in her chosen element.

Move, her mind told her.

"I cannot," she murmured deliriously.

You will die if you stay here.

“I know but I…” Unwillingly, her eyes began to shut and her functions ceased slowly as her body succumbed to the extreme cold.

Move.

Her last thought before she slipped into unconsciousness was that the falling snowflakes were so beautiful.