From where he stood behind his king’s throne, watching over the medical care the young man was receiving from the woman he trusted almost as much as he trusted anyone in this world, Ashe could barely hold back his anger. Watching Doctor Veda Kaule work on Myrl had allowed Ashe to calm down the roiling tides of anger and concern that had been threatening his composure.

The little woman, much older now than she had been when he had first met her, worked on Myrl’s bloodsoaked leg, while her student, Yarpa, stood at her side holding a tray of medical tools with one arm, and passed her instructor those tools she asked Yarpa for as the Young King sat on the throne and made wrinkle-nosed faces at the pain he was trying to cover with Ashe’s own brand of stoicism.

Around the great hall, he saw otter doctors, all dressed in the bright white robes trimmed in yellow of the Leech Hall ministering to various wounded people. He could even see several members of the clergy walking about the room, making sure the people knew they were being cared for in this world and the next.

Ashe wanted to laugh at that, considering that the “next world” could be any of a thousand worlds he knew about but had been unable to open a portal to. Instead, Ashe held his breathing steady and his features in a neutral state.

He had worked diligently to cultivate a particular aura here in Rhiada. It was one he wore on his face daily of bland, mild mannered apathy, and only very occasionally one of mild displeasure, that even then he would barely allow to peek through.

As a result of decades of this behavior, Lord Ashe was known to be as emotional as a stone in good times, and in bad times, he was seen as the unmoving face, mildly affected at best, of a storm of repercussions for those who had caused him to turn his unblinking notice upon them.

Most of the nobles of the kingdom, and a few nobles from other kingdoms, thought Lord Ashe was the son, or even the grandson, of the original Lord Ashe who had been hired by Myrl’s grandmother, Queen Mysella, to tutor the royal consort, Dwyrn, when his Talent had manifested. And later had been retained to train the young Prince, Myol, when his Talent manifested.

Some thought the name “Lord Ashe” was a hereditary title.

Some of the more cautious members of the staff and local lower castes thought Ashe was a crazed immortal, possibly a vrykolakas, who fed on the souls and blood of the innocent to fuel his evil powers and long life. Like the odious vrykolakas, many thought he was a shapeshifting monster who could walk through shadows and would appear out of the midnight gloom to steal the life and virtue of young women.

This prompted much of the staff to avoid him. It made many of the staff treat him with him as though they feared him. It made a few members of the staff, and the local nobles, try to get into his good graces, hoping that he could take them into his confidences, and share great treasures, pleasures, and maybe immortality with them.

About these many wild tales told about the man most knew as Lord Ashe, he did not give two shits. He cared only as much as he needed to care to guard his secrets, and be able to do his duty to Myrl. Beyond that? Nothing.

Like all men, he had a mother once upon a time. Like only three other people he had met, he had no father that anyone could find or reasonably name, being brought to life through a great expenditure of primal magic on the part of the women who had given them birth. His unusual coloration had wildly marked him out as a freak on his home world of Tellus of so long ago. Here on Thach, humanity had sprung up in such a variety of hues, that Ashe had been able to just tell people who asked that he was “Of the People of Tellus.”

Most of them had accepted that at face value, thinking there was either a land, a country, or a people called Tellus of which this gray man was the first representative they had met. Some others had asked more questions, being intrigued. But most let it lie at “I’m of Tellus.”

He did not have any children of his own. In his long life, he had been horrible with women when he was “young.” And then when he was older, he had been hurt by too many people who saw him as an aberration to take advantage of, and so had eschewed any longer term company, though the man he had known as his “Great Uncle,” being the uncle of his mother, had often tried to get him to settle down in one of the regions he had controlled back on Tellus.

When he had found a woman he thought he could build a life with, her family had had Ashe flung brutally from Tellus. He had landed on Thach, and had lived here in this world ever since. For almost three centuries, Ashe had moved from kingdom to kingdom amongst the people of Thach, looking for a way back to Tellus. Sometimes as an itinerant mage, other times as a scholar. Often as a teacher.

But when he had been taken in by Rhiada, by Queen Mysella, he had decided to throw in his lot with this kingdom because at first they offered what he had needed; safety and a place to study the Realms beyond this one. Later, he had come to love and respect the children he had been a tutor and trainer for here in the palace of the capital city of Ghlow.

There had been three generations of well mannered, sharp minded children that he had been utterly charmed to have tutored, and when a few had shown Talent, been their instructor and trainer in the ways of magic that even the best trained mages of this world could not understand as Ashe did. HIs methods derived from his own upbringing on that far off world was distinctly different from the methods native to Thach. And he had marveled at how different the uses of magic were on the two worlds, as well as how much more dangerous it was to use magic here on Thach.

On Tellus, people were born with innate access to magic, and had to learn how to draw it from the world and use it without killing themselves. Most humans didn’t bother to learn, due to the difficulty in finding a qualified instructor, and the strenuous nature of learning to harness the forces of creation.

Here on Thach only a limited few had access to magic. The numbers equaled out, there and here… Ashe thought. But for different reasons.

Some people here would suffer some trauma, internal or external, and then they suddenly would find themselves with access to magic; but rarely survived the experience because without training, and in those moments of trauma, they would pull magic from the easiest source, their own bodies and souls, and burn themselves out trying to stop whatever was causing them trauma. Quite often, here on Thach, a child or teen would suffer, and then explode as the potential of their power was used up all in a sing;e, futile burst.

His charge, his ward Myrl, had witnessed the death of his parents and his little sister. He had been supposed to die with them. He had been as much a target as the others. But seeing it happen to them had transformed Myrl, however briefly, into an engine of destruction. Ashe had been close enough to the incident to intervene, allowing Myrl to survive. But, Myrl would always be scarred by that day. By what he had seen, and, to a lesser extent, what he had done.

And now Myrl was wounded, and apparently being hunted by a cackling madman and his pack of monsters. Monsters that were hard to kill.

If he had had a month’s warning, Ashe could have overseen the creation of Artifacts that would combat these ravaging, twisted things. But, he had been given less than a full day. Not even enough time to discover the nature of the creatures. Not enough time to find the laughing madman who was trying to tear down the palace.

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As he watched, Doctor Veda finished stitching to the torn flesh of Myrl’s ankle and calf, and began gently washing it before allowing her student, her granddaughter Yarpa, wrap the leg in bandages.

From her body language, she had been having an argument with Myrl. Ashe left off of his watching everyone in the hall to step forward and intercede on either Myrl or Veda’s side.

“You will do as you please. You are the king.” She said bitterly as Ashe walked up. “But I will still, as your doctor, tell you that you should not be doing anything other than sleeping.”

Her tone was iron, hard and slightly brittle. Ashe knew that for all her skills, training, and strength, she would always hate confrontations. She didn’t enjoy telling people things they didn’t want to hear. She hated being the center of interest in a conversation that involved conflict. But she did it anyway, because to do otherwise would be a betrayal of her ethics.

It was both why she was a good physician, and a bad choice to be one. Ashe sighed, thinking of the decades they could have had together. Gone now. Crumbs on the table of scones left uneaten… Ashe gave himself a shake. He wasn't usually prone to flights of poetry. He knew himself to be very bad at poetry, so avoided it whenever he could. …scones, indeed…

“I hear your advice, Doctor Kaule, but I don’t have that luxury. I hope you understand that when I stand up, and work to end this situation, it is not to spite you.”

The boy said it with a self-deprecating smile. It made Ashe a little proud. He had trained Myrl in that tactic, and the young king had taken time out of every day practicing facial expressions, and body language to help him relate to his fellow Rhiadians. It didn’t come naturally to him. Ashe often wondered if this was something he was born with, or part of the stress which that early trauma had gifted him.

Veda looked up at where Ashe now stood, she pleaded with him with her eyes to make the boy see sense. Ashe nodded silently at her. And then signaled to the diminutive doctor that he would talk with her later. He then meaningfully looked down from the raised stage where the throne sat, its injured king ensconced, to where a duke from a western province was arguing with another doctor while he bled from a wound to his shoulder.

“Doctor Kaule, Assistant Kaule, if you will excuse me. I need to confer with my Advisor, and with a few others while we try to end this…” He faltered a moment. “Whatever this is.”

The petite doctor bowed, and her assistant shook like a small dog in a cold wind before she too bobbed a deep bow and spun to follow her patroness and grandmother to tend to the next highest ranking casualty in the room. As the two women walked away, Myrl shifted uncomfortably in his seat on the throne, and looked up at Ashe who now stood near.

“Thoughts?” Myrl simply asked.

“The man who is trying to destroy the palace has power, but for some reason is only using a single Fulminata spell to do it. He just runs from place to place, casting the same angry force spell over and over. He’s not just mad, he’s also limited.”

Ashe let a grumble die unvoiced in his throat as he considered. “The things that are attacking us with him… they are either directly controlled by him. Moved by his will, which may explain why he cannot cast any other spells, he only has so much concentration he can spare for the things. Or, possibly, they are somehow slaved directly to his Will.”

Ashe squinted off into the distance. “No. Not directly slaved to his will. That would be too much for any mind to control. He would be lying in a safe place, practically asleep, as they moved about under his command. No. More than likely they are given simple commands to fulfill, and then they just rampage around until their next command is given. Messy, but messy looks like the goal here. Someone wants destruction.”

“Assassination?” Myrl asked.

“Probably not. Though he would like it if it happened, that isn’t the target here. Here, what is wanted is just chaos and fear. Ruin and disorder, the more the better.”

Ashe had been about to elaborate on the idea of destroying an enemy by destroying their sense of Security and Order, when two people stepped toward the throne, and bowed slightly before the king. It was the two highest members of the clergy serving in the capital city.

The squat, broad form of the High Priest of the Sun Goddess, Rhoona, Arne Raoh. Beside him towered the tall, spare, angular form of a silvery haired, elderly woman. From her robes, she was the High Priestess of the Greater Moon God, Arluan, which to Ashe’s recollection made her High Priestess Caora Ord, of the Blue Temple. She walked with a tall, sturdy cane of black oak that bore a single image of the moon, engraved with the five letters that made up the name of her god.

Where Arne walked with the solidity of a man who still did his own chores every day, Caora walked with a slightly palsied gate, and took every step as if it pained her. Ashe knew the woman was at the end of her time on Thach, but didn’t know what kept her at her post, and why she had yet to name her successor.

“Your majesty.” Arne began. “I have the pleasure to introduce to you High Priestess Ord, of the Blue Temple. She has come to try to undo some of the horrors that have been done this night and last night.” With that, Arne inclined his head and gestured for the elderly priestess to step forward.

In a voice that reminded Myrl of every regret he had ever felt, the High Priestess addressed him. Her voice was stronger and carried more weight than her frail form would have you believe could come from its withered and quaking structure. “Sire. Someone has stolen an Artifact of the Temple. I don’t know how, nor do I know who. Though the insane person screaming and trying to shake the palace apart would be my first guess.” She sniffed in disdain at the mention of the cackling master of the beasts. Slowly she half turned from Myrl and Ashe toward the distant sound of cracking stonework. Those creatures that he has called forth, he does that using an ancient Artifact of Arluan.” Here she made a reverent gesture with one hand, invoking the form of the Moon in its First Quarter.

Myrl looked at Ashe. Ashe looked back at his student. “These monsters, these creatures… They are impervious to most spells. And they heal from almost every form of punishment they receive.”

The elderly priestess nodded silently. “As long as the moon shines, they will heal from any injury they suffer. And once the Sun rises, they will sleep until they may rise with the moon, as it rises again.”

“Can you stop these things?” Ashe asked.

“I cannot. I can pray. I can help to heal those afflicted once the Artifact is taken from the hands of the beasts’ tormentor. But, otherwise, all I can do is ask for Arluan to show us all Mercy.”

Ashe tried hard to not roll his eyes in disgust.

Myrl held up his scepter of office, which glowed with a weakly golden light in the gathering darkness of the lantern lit hall. “This did more damage. Lasting damage. Do you know why?”

Arne and Caora looked to one another, both Ashe and Myrl could feel the battle of Wills that was happening in the air between their angry gazes. Whatever fight was being waged, Caora lost, and lowered her head.

Arne spoke. “Your Scepter, your crown, your throne, I believe there are some other Royal Artifacts…” He paused for a moment. “I had heard there was a ring… Artifacts are acts of High Art where an object is imbued with magic, and its power is renewed by a Set Condition.”

Ashe did roll his eyes then. “Yes. And each Artifact has power through the renewal of that Set Condition that is used to renew the charms and spells placed upon it by the Mages who created it. A classic example is the sword that can cut through any armor. Its spells are renewed by taking a life, by drinking in the life and soul of a person. A lesser example would be the Sun Quills. Writing quills that use magic to burn their messages onto whatever the writer uses them on, but they have to sit in the light of the Rising Sun to renew that spell, there are manacles that keep a mage from casting by shocking the mage. The spell used to shock them is renewed in the manacles by rubbing the blood of a mage upon them, so most of those manacles are made with inward pointing spikes, or small sharp blades that draw blood from those they are placed on.”

The look of anger that came over Ashe’s face at his mention of the Mage Manacles was potent.

Arne looked very uncomfortable, but forged ahead. “Through the ages, several past members of your line, my king, worked to create Artifacts that would respond only to the Condition of being wielded by a member of your line. Some of them further require that the items be used in defense of others. In the defense of Rhiada.”

Myrl was quiet as he absorbed this. He looked down at his bandaged leg. Then at the assembled people in the hall. The Royals. The merchants. The servants. He saw the little doctor who had stitched up his leg with fine silk in dainty, quick little movements. She was now attending to a soldier who Myrl had seen fall. A soldier who had fallen because they had stood between Myrl and a monster.

“So. I need to be the one to face the beasts.”