Elkring had been ravaged once by war, once by plague and once by falling stars. The survivors had gathered nearby the Elkrater and begun to rebuild. They were led by the nameless sorceress, the Rain Mage, they called her for her storms and rain that she bought to nourish the crops. She no longer birthed monsters or called upon her powers of fire and ruin, instead she turned to merely running the rebirth of a broken people.

The military had deserted or turned their backs on war and so the fledgling city was vulnerable to the many brigands and vagabonds left by the carnage of the war. The Rain Mage was powerful but she could not be everywhere at once and that was were Gull came in. She was no leader, she was no glorious hero like all those who had originally led Elkring and who had died in the war. But she was all they had and so she trained up the small collection of recruits she could find and set them to patrolling the city of Elkrater as it slowly built itself up from the ground.

First came the task of feeding not only the inhabitants but the many refugees who flocked to the city daily, often beset on the road by brigands and criminals. They arrived through the newly built city gates in droves, many of them dying or sick while the city had few who could care for them. Luckily the witches, Magda and Nath had learned much in their time caring for the city while it had been stricken with plague and them and their many new apprentices kept even the most unfortunate arrivals from dying. This, sadly, meant more mouths to feed.

Gull and the Rain Mage organised great farming projects. Reclaiming the land ravaged by war and plotting it with crops and animals, imported from Nargathrum or from surrounding farmlands. This still paled in comparison to the demand however and after Nargathrum was devastated by mysterious magics it became apparent that the scale of their farming project would be woefully inadequate and so Gull left on a mission.

She established trade with the Greenlands, a land as yet untouched by war and through diligent policing of the long road between them managed to transport great quantities of food and goods into Elkrater. Yet the city was hungrier still and so Gull went to the Eastlands, a savage country regularly at war with the Hallowed Realm itself and lacking greatly in resources anyway. But Gull went to them for they had soldiers and with soldiers she could reclaim the land from brigands and bandits and turn it into farmable land. The Eastlanders had once had their own sorcerer and had planned to conquer the Hallowed Realm with his great power but Gull and Mad Maeggy had put a stop to that long ago. So now they bent the knee before the Rain Mage and joined Gull’s fledgling force.

Finally, after setting out to reclaim the land Gull ventured into the Deepwood. A mysterious place filled with magic and trickery and recently itself ravaged by something as its trees had first caught fire and then turned to stone. She met with many of the strange denizens of its wood. Fae queens and elven kings before finally coming to the denizen of the wood who seemed most like her. A mercenary who performed all the difficult tasks required by the others of the Deepwood. Alfy the Night Fairy. The two of them forged an alliance never before seen between humans and fae creatures and the Deepwood offered up its considerable resources to aid the struggling humans and in exchange the humans sent them gold. For while their food supplies and cities had been destroyed, a venture into the ruins of Nargathrum had uncovered enormous piles of gold hoarded for decades by the merchants of that city who had died in the mysterious scourge of Nargathrum. So while Gull had little in the way of food or goods she had gold to spend and spend it she did.

They tore down the wooden walls and rebuilt them in stone. Dwarves and gnomes from the Deepwood flocked to the city to turn it into a fortress, the like of which had never been seen in the Hallowed Realm, possibly the world. Rivers and roads were carved out of the ground, connecting the four allied lands together. Fae, witches and sorcerers all worked together to rebuild a civilisation that had nearly been lost to the darkness of war. Months went by, years. The new realm was built and a people grew back. They had faced wars and magics and the elemental forces of the world itself. Yet they were still there.

Slowly the flood of refugees began to waver, soon it was a trickle, then it stopped all together. The city had been built and the realm had been saved and Gull had taken on enormous amounts of responsibility. She was now in charge of the royal guard with the royals themselves so far absent. The old king had died in the war and his son was missing, presumed dead. There was no clear line of succession and in the rebuilding the old titles of various lords had meant little before the Rain Mage. Yet the Rain Mage did not want to be queen and Gull thought that was for the best. Despite her growing reputation she was still a sorceress and was distrusted by many. What’s more she would never die barring extraordinary circumstances and Gull thought it wise to not have such a ruler. So instead they held a vote. Many of the old lords and ladies wished the vote to be exclusive to them but Gull turned them down. This new realm was for everyone, and everyone would have a say.

Gathering the votes was one of the most difficult logistical tasks she had had to face in the entire time. It was ambiguous whether many of those living in far flung places were part of the new realm at all and getting to them to explain the situation was difficult if it was decided they were. What’s more in the years of the Rebuilding many once bandits and brigands had taken their own lands and become farmers and laborers giving service to Elkrater. Many protested that such criminals who had robbed them on the street would have a say but Gull knew that distinguishing between these people and those who had followed all the laws during those early years would be next to impossible. So she instead gathered their votes all the same. It was during this time that she began to have visions. All across the realm she travelled in a cart that carried piles upon piles of papers and she began to watch those papers burn. Each night she would dream of fire and ruin and even by day the fire wormed its way into her sight. She tried to ignore it, tried to simply focus on travelling to the next stop, and the next one. Giving her speech to the next group, and the next one. Adding their votes to the pile and trying not to look even when her eyes told her that it was burning. But it wasn’t burning, nothing was burning, except for in her mind.

But her mind kept burning and then came the voice. A sickly, twisted, ugly voice, that didn’t speak, but still somehow made itself understood.

“Knight...” it said. “Great knight... You cannot do this alone...” It said and Gull was tempted to believe it. She had been working non-stop since the fall of the city and there was still no sign of her many responsibilities slowing down any time soon. She missed Maeggy, smart, witty Maeggy, she would know what to do.

The fires and the voice continued and Gull ignored them. She could almost tune them out, almost convince herself that there was nothing there. That everything was fine as she buried herself in her duties. But sometimes, on the particularly long stretches of road when she had little to do but stare at the countryside, she was drawn into it and she watched the countryside burn.

It only grew worse when she saw the man. He was just an ordinary man, living an ordinary life in a reclaimed farm shack. He could have been anyone, he could have even been a farmer the whole time but Gull doubted it. No, she recognised the man from her days in the pit. From her days as a gladiatrix, forced to fight other women and animals for the amusement of men and she remembered this one. She gathered his vote calmly but all the while she watched him burn.

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“I can help you knight...” the voice said. “I can grant you your revenge...”

Gull had been tempted by the voice before and she was even more tempted by it now. She watched the man write out his vote and rage and burning anger filled her as all around her fires raged. She could barely think, she could barely breathe, she just stood there in the fire, her hand twitching toward her sword. But then she saw a flower. A pretty little flower in a vase on the man’s table. A little flower that just happened to be the same as the flower Maeggy had offered her all those years ago in her cage. She didn’t remember what the flower was, she was fairly sure Maeggy had lied about it anyway, but she remembered the flower.

She also then remembered that she was not angry with this man. The fire may have been angry but she wasn’t. She was not angry with her past life, not that part of it. This man may have stolen her life and done horrible things to her but in recent times she had found that she no longer cared. She didn’t have time to care, not about someone as worthless as him.

She took his vote, added it to the pile and rode the cart away, the flames dying behind her.

Finally she returned to Elkrater and then came the time to count the votes. Luckily she could delegate that particular task to those more skilled than her while she returned to running the city. It was a great fortress now, raising high into the air above the Great Crater and the memorial at its base. The Rain Mage had been busy and all across the surrounding lands great irrigated farmlands grew. The people were fed and at last peace had come to the realm. She watched as it all began to burn.

She did not understand, she had turned it down when it asked if she wanted help, she had turned it down when it asked if she wanted revenge. What more could it ask of her? What more could she-

She looked back at the memorial. The great stone slab in the center of the crater inscribed with all the names of those who had died. Gull knew almost none of the people inscribed upon it. But she knew one. The flames were asking if she wanted Mad Maeggy. Her friend, her saviour and the saviour of this whole realm. Maeggy had given her magical blood to protect the people from the plague before sacrificing herself to drive it away entirely. Gull had been helpless before it and had stood by and watched from afar. The other things she could breeze by. Running things was not something she was passionate about but it was something she just got on and did, encouraged by all the recruits and people she’d trained. And revenge wasn’t something she’d even thought about since escaping that fighting ring. But Maeggy. She did miss Maeggy.

“I can bring her back knight...” the voice said. “You can see her again...”

Gull stared into the flames and thought.

The votes were counted and Peppers, the Queen of Fools, jangled her way up the steps of the castle to bring forth the news. She found Gull staring down into the crater from a high tower, a far away look in her eyes.

“Gull, Gull,” she said happily. “Now is no time to be brooding. There is great news, excellent news!”

Gull looked up at Peppers and tried to push the burning and raging flame to the back of her head. Peppers reminded her of Maeggy a little and that hurt. That hurt so very bad.

“The votes have all been counted. We counted them up and we counted them down and we counted them each other way and there is a clear winner!”

Gull did not respond, occupied as she was with the fire that was now threatening to consume everything, including Peppers. Luckily Peppers didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s you Gull!” Peppers said happily and Gull took a moment to understand. “You won, most everyone voted for you. Not a lord or a witch or a merchant. You, the Head of the Guard.”

“M... me...?” Gull asked, her shock pushing back the flames a little.

“Yes,” Peppers replied. “Queen Gull, the Queen of Elkrater and beyond.”

Gull blinked a few times and looked back out at the memorial. She was queen. After all that work, all that toil and labor the people had seen her and voted for her. A pit fighter who had crawled out of the ground, helped Maeggy on her adventures and worked her way up to a position of power. She looked down at the memorial and the flames slowly began to recede. All her life she had been a warrior, a fighter, someone who was only good for killing things. But now, now she was something else.

Maeggy was dead, she had died a heroes death and Gull had no wish to pervert that by bringing her back in whatever undead form this fire demon had planned. She walked down the stairs with Peppers who was loudly and comically introducing her as Queen Gull to all before them. She found a soldier who seemed just as shocked as she was and handed him her sword. Whispering to the voice in her head which was shrivelling away in fear and horror she said. “I am no knight.” Then the flames died away entirely as she strode out to embrace her new role as Queen of the Hallowed Realm.

The Arbiter looked across the wreckage of Nargathrum. Where Elkring had been rebuilt into Elkrater, a truly glorious city and a testament to the resilience of the peoples of the Hallowed Realm, Nargathrum had rotted. It was a festering cesspool of seawater and decay and the Arbiter believed it was only a matter of time before some new evil moved in. But she was not interested in new evils, she cared only about old ones. More importantly the thing that had done this to Nargathrum, the thing that had killed Kulrod.

The two who had agreed to meet her strode up the hill. They were early, that was fortunate, the Arbiter hated people to be late. She was tempted to use her voice, her most powerful weapon, and command them to divulge all their secrets immediately but she had to admit that they might be useful later. The woman was a poisoner and apothecary, a member of some ancient sect of ninjas, and the man was an old warlord out of the Eastlands, who now served as a bodyguard for the poisoner as she traveled the new land and sold her wares. Apparently they knew a great deal about what had happened in Nargathrum and had some idea of what the great Scourge as they called it might be. The Arbiter was desperate to learn.

They spoke for almost an hour with the Arbiter asking many questions as to the nature of the Scourge. The Man of a Thousand Shadows they called him. The Arbiter knew a great deal about the world and the magical artifacts in it. This man clearly had the legendary Amulet of the Dead. A relic rumored to have been lost thousands of years ago. But that was not all it seemed. For in Kulrod’s great attack involving all the reanimated forces of Nargathrum the man had used some sort of great power involving fire. That could be many things but whatever it was the Arbiter was worried. What was even more worrying was that the man now had the Sword in the Sky, stolen from Kulrod. This man was dangerous, much more dangerous than any other recent threats the Council of Sorcerers had faced. The world was healing, that was true, but if someone was going to strike at her sorcerers. Not to mention destroying an entire city. That was something the Arbiter would have to do something about.

She left the poisoner and her bodyguard and returned through the Ways to her tower. There she picked up a red bow with red arrows. She did not want to face someone with the Amulet of the Dead alone, and her sorcerers were unlikely to want to help battle someone capable of killing them. But she had another friend, a newer sorcerer just recently escaped from the clutches of the medusae. The special sorcerer capable of producing more medusae, come to her broken and wounded from his many years imprisoned.

She fired the bow and the red arrow grew wings and turned into a red bird which flew across the world. It flew long and fast and eventually turned back into an arrow to plummet to the ground beside a man sitting and reading outside a small hut on a small island. The man put down his book and took a note from the arrow. He unfolded it and read it with his blood red eyes.