‘Their words reach us even here! As battlefields of old become the graves of new, they come to us with a proclamation! Find the heir to the setting sun! Find he who would whisper us into a new age of aetheric predation!’

* A prophetic dream as recounted by Sergeant Jacob of the 32nd Holy Infantry Battalion; Circa The Era of Renewal, Year 457.

By the time that Tifenn had figured out how to get not only her horns, but her wings, through the silken dress that she had been given, Duncan was already strapping the final touches to his own outfit. She watched as he finished deftly stringing knives and other sharp instruments, ones that she hadn’t seen in the sack, through the hoops of his trousers. His hands moved with experience that Tifenn had either never known about, or simply forgotten. Clarity never lasted. She moved her eyes back down towards her own tools. The Lodestone balanced, although gently swayed, on a magical force so small it escaped her ears. She only knew it was there because all Lodestones produced one when set down upon a flat surface. Beside it, a small kitchen knife. Tifenn once more looked towards Duncan's array of weapons, and felt her eyes narrow. It struck her as odd, for some reason, that Duncan would have thought to grab them. She’d never known him to be violent. But it was their difference when compared to what she’d been given, that really got her. The knives that he had were… military issue? Maybe. She banished the thought from her mind, although baffled she knew it wasn’t important, and inhaled to speak.

‘Have we spoken about what we’re going to do once we get out of here?’ She asked.

Duncan tilted his head towards the sky, the movement contemplative, ‘I don’t think we did.’ He looked back down, glancing at her over his shoulder. ‘Any ideas?’ He said.

Tifenn shook her head, a sullen chill blossoming in her chest. ‘I fear I will be lost without a hand to guide me.’ She shook her head again, sighing. ‘I will have no choice in the matter.’

Duncan looked her in the eye for a second that seemed to drag on forever, his eyes, one purple, one green, were cast in a dull glow under the waning torchlight. The muscles in Tifenn’s neck spasmed as she struggled to hold his gaze without her mind wandering. Her ears became hot, a small tune, she could sense the notes, hovered on the edge of her mind. But they were obscured, as if purposefully hidden behind some sort of veil. She felt that sullen feeling fade, her chest untightening. Ease crept into her soul as if water had been directly delivered to her veins. She felt a breath be forced into her lungs as she inhaled. Duncan reached forward, and pushed her chestnut brown hair away from her forehead. He frowned slightly, when he beheld it.

‘The Rot hasn’t moved much… has it.’ He said.

Tifenn felt an immediate unease crest over her, as a forgotten memory was prodded. Beyond the Crucible, the continent of Qik’alyn had been taken by an odd disease within the last three decades or so. It was officially known as Aether Sickness. The continent knew it as the Rotless Death. It always started as scaling across some part of the body. Small crystalline growths that wound their way across your entire body. Each one was rich in Aether, and it was believed that the more you used magic, the more it grew– how people caught it however, was unknown. She had been born with it, which had increased her chances of survival. And in all her nineteen years of life, it had never become more than simple scaling across her forehead.

It was why they kept her here. It was why they refused to let her know who her mother or father were.

‘It never does.’ She said, swatting his hand away.

‘I’ll have to try and scare you up something to cover it with…’ He reached for the sack, before tearing it into strips. He motioned for her to lift up her hair, and when she did, he tied the strips around her head and under her curling horns. He nodded to her, and she let down her hair.

‘Are you ready for this, Tifenn?’ He asked, standing up and moving towards the door he had entered through.

Tifenn stood, following him at a pace before turning to face her stained glass window for what felt like the final time. She clutched the lodestone gently, letting its soft rhythm wash over her once more. When Tifenn turned once more to look at him, she offered him a pained smile, a bubbling sense of anger boiling in her chest. They had kept her behind these stone walls for too long. The words she spoke now were the clearest he had heard from her in a long time. 7

‘They will cage me no longer.’

[https://i.imgur.com/gNAg309.png]

It took them over an hour and a half to cross half of the complex with relative stealth. Half a mile in an hour and a half was most certainly not the speed Tifenn wished they were travelling at, but Duncan insisted that even with the lessened presence, stealth was prudent. They travelled through twisting halls and winding paths, over and out of secluded enclosed gardens and past deserted guard stations. It was eerie, in an odd way, to see the cathedral so… dead. Even from here, so deep within the complex, Tifenn could hear a city at war with itself. Part of her wanted to try and understand why they were rioting. She had asked Duncan during the quieter part of their journey what the riots were about. He had explained it to her as quickly as he could, without patronising her for a lack of real world knowledge.

‘Some decade ago, I think– one of Thane Tyvolins slaves went insane. She was showing signs of Aether Sickness, the first in the city, and it somehow unlocked some… latent abilities? Or so he claimed. Some called him a liar, said he was keeping a member of one of the greater races captive, and they had somehow broken their wards, others called him a liar, but offered no explanation as to what they thought he was lying about. What it did do, was force the city to look at its stance on slaves. They’re pretty commonplace the world over. There are some more progressive elements further north of us in Skav’Darej, apparently the cults hate slavery. But they’ve become more common pretty much everywhere.’ He paused, ‘I’m not sure about the other countries, but the Crucible is now majority against slavery– barring those in charge, since they want to keep their power. Every year since that slave got away, tensions tend to rise around the anniversary of her escape. Often leads to riots.’

He’d told her that half an hour ago, and she was still thinking about it now. For all intents and purposes, they were considered slaves. In all but name at least. Another facet to her imprisonment. The Crucible was the first and last human colony on the continent, meaning they were at a cultural disadvantage already– coupled with the fact they were born into the Ised as lower rung acolytes… it was a potent mix. Humans, as far as she had heard and read, are a very imperious race. Rationalising her existence hurt her head in a way that felt like rubbing alcohol into a wound. She was so deep in her own head, that she didn’t notice Duncan’s hand go up at first, only realising when he had thrown both of his arms around her, awkwardly grabbing her under her wings. She watched a feather drop to the floor as she was pulled into a dark recess. A doorway, maybe.

Duncan’s eyes were narrowed angrily.

Tifenn could just barely make out the space around them through dying torchlight. They had wandered into a conjunction, a cross shaped hallway sporting a couple of darkened lanterns, and the same dark stone as the rest of the building's interior. Although it looked cleaner here, than it did at the back. She peered back upwards towards Duncan, whose eyes hadn’t moved at all. When she followed his gaze, she saw what had spooked him. Standing not ten feet from them, was a tall armoured figure, his left hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip, and in his right, a feather. The man, she assumed by the shape of his armour, bore no engravings or markings of the Cathedral. His armour was of an entirely different make, in fact. His sword hung in an extravagant sheath, his helmet was intricate, bearing the head of a skeletal dragon on its front. She could feel Duncan’s breath hitch as the man studied the feather, turning it to and fro, before lifting it to his mouth. She watched a long snaking tongue flick at it, disgust rising in her stomach. After a long second the man, who she hoped was a man and not something else, put the feather down on the ground with an accuracy that frightened her.

Duncan slowly moved his hand up from her hip to her mouth, muttering words she couldn’t understand or recognise just above her ear. When she finally tore her eyes away from the man, she could see that Duncan’s own eyes were wide, terrified. The Armoured figure fished into a side pouch, and pulled a smooth red gem to his mouth, and she watched as it pulsed thrice, runes engraved in gold along its side glowing, before he spoke into it. His voice was like nails across slate, a deep hissing sound that hurt her ears, plucked at her brain.

‘Your… pet project seems to have goneee… for a walk.’ He said into the stone, pausing throughout the sentence.

Moments later, a familiar voice buzzed through the stone. Duncan’s fingers dug into her cheek, earning a grunt from her. The man paused, catching the noise, but the voice through the stone recaptured his attention.

‘She cannot be allowed to leave the complex!’ The voice said, stuffy, as if spoken through layers, There was an androgyny to it that stopped her from remembering who it was. ‘Do not let any harm befall her…’ He paused, as if contemplative, ‘She wouldn’t have been able to do this alone. If she has an accomplice… well, I leave that down to your own discretion, hunter.’

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The man laughed, the noise like a rasping hiss, ‘I’ll take care not to… kill her.’ He stood looking around the crossroads. ‘Where is she likely to head… if I find a feather… in the smallest of the west wing crossroads… floor one.’

It was a tense thirty seconds before the voice rang through, ‘Her chambers are not far from there. Move east, towards the proving grounds. There are whispers of her being friendly with a number of the newer acolytes. Perhaps she has hidden in with them?’

The man nodded to himself, before untightening his grasp on the stone. She watched as it faded, and he put it away. His head turned all around, his eyes at one point moving over hers in a way that felt as though he should have seen her. The sounds of music graced her ears, soft and well spoken. Each note blended into the next, hiding its true sound behind the next, and the next. Beads of sweat dropped from Duncan’s head onto her brow, moving over her face and towards her mouth. The man's eyes were Monochromatic. A pale white.

Only when he had moved off, stalking down a hallway in the direction adjacent to the one they wanted to travel, did Duncan release his breath, and with it, the illusory wall that Tifenn now realised had sat between them and the man. She caught the faint and fading sight of hovering runic circles around the door frame they had been pulled into, each one a deep violet. She also saw that same colouration around Duncan’s contorted hand. Around the Lodestone within it. She hadn't known about that one.

Duncan finally released her, pushing out into the hallway. His eyes were still wide with panic, his breathing heavy in the centre of his chest. Tifenn, one eye still on her friend, crept towards her feather, and plucked it from the floor. She turned apologetic eyes towards Duncan.

‘I’m sorry I forg-’

‘It’s fine.’ He said, cutting her off. ‘If I hadn’t pulled you so hard, a feather wouldn’t have fallen. But I also likely wouldn’t have been quick enough.’ His eyes were still trained on the hallway the man had walked down.

‘Who was that?’ She said, ‘I… I only recognised the voice through the stone, but it does not stir enough to elicit a memory it seems.’

Tifenn’s eyes widened as Duncan plucked the feather from her fingers, and tucked it away in a loop of his trousers. He seemed… angry? Although not at her. She couldn’t really grasp what it was that he was angry at.

Duncan frowned, and she watched it deepen. ‘It doesn’t matter. We need to get moving again.’

Tifenn nodded, although she felt as if the frown she had gotten from him wasn’t a prod at her forgetfulness, this time.

[https://i.imgur.com/gNAg309.png]

All the best laid go wrong, eventually. And despite their own, rather Duncan’s, careful planning, they slipped up.

Tifenn had been following Duncan for close to two hours now, and they were rapidly approaching the massive crystalline doors that would bring her salvation. She could see them, towards the end of the truly massive chamber they were in. Massive stone arches like the ribcage of some great beast hung over head, each one ending in a hand holding a pale blue lantern. Pillars shot up from the floor at sometimes awkward angles, the design was messy, although intentional, rows upon rows of pews sat between them. And beyond them, at the very end of the room freedom. The Cathedral’s front and foremost entrance, facing out towards the wisp, and further than that the lucent sea, was a set of massive double doors, hewn from crystal not found anywhere near the land that it was constructed on. They shone from within, marble-esque striations permeating its length, each one encapsulated within the vibrant sapphire stone of the door itself. Stealth had been thrown out the window the moment they’d entered the chamber.

Duncan had grabbed her arm, and broken out into a full sprint. The doors had been so far away when they had started running, some five hundred feet, that there was no way for him to have seen it, no way for him to have known to look. Tifenn had heard it, however.

On the very edge of her hearing, she had caught the faintest tickle of an angry song, firey and impatient, it screamed out to burn the enemies of its caster, to ruin the world it was brought into. The pointed ends of her horns, curling like those of a ram, sat just within her periphery, but she could see it. Just off to their right, a lone man in purple robs sat crouched with one hand contorted back at his chest, one finger pointed towards the end of the staff in his other. She watched as a reddish mote of light fizzled into existence, shaking with undefinable fury.

A moment of clarity. A veil, lifted.

Tifenn mustered all of her constable strength and tore Duncan down, throwing him to the ground with so much force that she felt the breath in his lungs evaporate. His body ragdolled some fourty feet before coming to a stop. Tifenn flung her wings up, overlapping them in front of her. She dug her fingers through the stone at her feet, just in time for the mote to collide with her wings. A sudden rush of heat so intense she could smell her feathers burn engulfed her. It rolled around her, licks of flame scorching her head. Yet she did not move. She could feel the force of the fire trying desperately to push her back, but the stone she gripped did not budge. As quickly as the fire had appeared, it was gone.

When she brought her wings back, they were smouldering, the damage was mostly superficial it seemed, the fire had been strong, but she had somehow been stronger. Tifenn pried her hands from the stone to see that the skin on her fingers had been shredded, and her pinky was bent at an odd angle. Unimportant She thought. Tifenn threw her head up to look at the robed man, only to catch him in a rabid sprint towards her, another spell forming at the end of his staf.

Tifenn barely had time to throw her arms up before he was upon her, bringing down his heavy wooden staff towards her head. Instinct alone saved her. Some animalistic part of Tifenn’s nature forced her to roll her head sideways, catching his staff in the curve of her right horn. The motion pulled him off of his feet, dissipating what sounded to her like something more akin to the Necromantic family of magic– this one came with the sounds of buzzing and the reek of rot. The man dropped the staff as his spell was interrupted. Tifenn flung her hands up in time to catch his wrists as his hands tightened around her throat.

She looked to her side, trying desperately to find Duncan. She could see him, just barely coming to his feet. He clutched his head, a small but consistent river of blood dripping from his forehead. She’d overcompensated, and overestimated the size of the man's spell. Tifenn had put all of her strength into throwing Duncan. All the strength she could safely use without overstressing her body. Tifenn supposed she didn’t have a choice– it was all or nothing.

Tifenn clenched the man’s wrists, her hands slowly winding tighter and tighter. The robed figure’s features began to contort from rage into panic as Tifenn’s grip grew and grew.

He desperately began to pull away, the stranglehold he had on her lessening more and more by the second. Tifenn leapt at the opportunity, and clenched her fists together with so much force she could physically feel his wrists be pulverised. She shut them with so much force, that the reverberations backfired into her own hands, and she felt the spider webbing sensation of previously broken bones cracking.

She finally unballed her fists, and the man reeled back, his hands now floppy at the end of his arms. Tifenn watched with shocked adoration as Duncan, who had managed to not only get to his feet, but close the distance, flung his hand out, sending a dagger flying directly for the man’s head.

It embedded itself in his forehead, and he fell dead within a matter of seconds, flopping backwards, pinning Tifenn’s legs.

Tifenn pushed his body off of her with a foot, bringing her hands to her face to study them. She could feel where old breaks had been cracked anew, and her pinky still bent at an odd angle.

She held her hand up to Duncan as he approached, and he took it gently. She clenched her teeth as he snapped her pinkie back into place, the pain a jarring sensation.

‘I… I’m sorry.’ He said. ‘I didn’t even… I’m sorry.’ He said again.

Tifenn shook her head, shaking the last of the pain out of her hand, ‘It’s fine, I barely heard it myself.’ Tifenn turned her head to the direction they had come from, the noise of stampeding men approaching them with a rapid fervour. ‘We need to go!’ She said, pushing up into an awkward sprint. Her wings dragged behind her, her body having used all of its strength just then drained her. Duncan took up after her, lifting her wings off of the ground. The sprint towards the door was perhaps the most desperate of her life so far. Each breath pounded in her chest, each slam into the stone beneath her feet sent screaming waves of pain up into her hips. Salvation was so close, so so so close.

By the time they had gotten to the door, the men chasing them barrelled into the chamber. One score of men, the last remnants of the guard within the Cathedral.

Duncan grimaced, his eyes full of apprehension and fear– but he remained stalwart, nodding to her. ‘The Stone!’

Tifenn nodded herself, ‘Get the door open, Go! Go!’

She spun on her heels, facing the approaching men. They were still some fifty feet away. Tifenn brought the stone to her mouth and kissed it, muttering to herself.

‘Ised’s breath do not screw up.’

She crushed it slightly, cracks webbing across the Lodestone. A song only she could hear filled the room– different to what she had originally heard within the Stone. This song was joyous, it was free. It contained the same familiar thundering notes and crashing scores, but it was happier than she had thought it was before. It was appreciative.

Tifenn hucked her arm above her head, and with all her remaining might, threw the stone across the chamber at the approaching men.

She watched their eyes become alive with confusion, fear, and rage, as the entire room was filled with a living thunderstorm. She had asked Duncan to imbue the stone with… a spell to push people, something to give them space. Spells she did not know the name of. This creature before her, she did know however. That was a Banelemened. An Air elemental. And it tore into those men with impunity.

Duncan grabbed her arm, turning her away from the carnage and began his sprint anew, this time through the door. Tifenn closed her eyes as rain began to hit her face for the first time in years, fresh air unimpeded by stone blew against her hair, her feathers, her skin. The smell of wet earth and growing grass stuffed itself into her nose.

Tifenn was… free. Tifenn had gotten out.

Her ears told a different story.

All around her, Tifenn could hear the sounds of a city killing itself. Shouts for more fire, shouts for reinforcements, shouts to hold gates and shouts to push through. The smell of earth faded, replaced by the acrid noise of burning flesh. Fresh blood. A smell so strong that it carried all the way up to these lofty heights.

When Tifenn opened her eyes, she was met by the visage of a city drowning under a thunderstorm.

When Tifenn opened her eyes, she was met by the visage of a city engulfed in flames.