"THE 3RD BLEAKNESS WAS A BATTLE LIKE NO OTHER. IT LEFT MANY DEAD AND MANY MORE, ESPECIALLY MY WARRIORS, BROKEN."

* THE HELLFIRE CHRONICLES, HOLY BOOK OF TRAGSXT

3rd of Jirath, 1012 on the war calendar:

Helandrin sat on the damp floor of his prison cell. He glanced around at his confinement, a simple cubed cell with his chains mounted to the wall.

At least his shackles were long enough for him to move around a bit.

"How the mighty have fallen." He thought to himself. The soldiers used to call him the Ocean's Sword. He was their hero, and now he sat ready to be executed any second.

Unless...

Helandrin grabbed the collar around his neck and pulled. It was useless, of course, but he felt the collar become a little looser around his neck.

"I Pledge not to die in here!" Helandrin yelled.

Surprisingly, his skin started to glow with flowing gold mist, but it was much less than they should have been.

It wasn't a strong pledge, sure, but even the uninitiated could tell he wasn't receiving the right amount of power. The obsidian was still dampening his Devildealing.

He breathed in the small amount anyway.

His skin started to glow, and Helandrin again tried to break the collar around his neck.

Again, it only loosened slightly.

Helandrin sighed and returned to staring endlessly at the stone, wishing he was dead.

A white light glowed in front of him.

Shrowded in astral white were his dead companions, all smiling at him. General Oa met his eyes. "Survive." He commanded.

Helandrin blinked in shock. There was nothing there.

He groaned at his insanity as footsteps sounded down the hall.

It was Commander Tali.

The middle-aged soldier had a broken nose. Tali smiled at the miserable state Helandrin was in.

"You're little buddy, he escaped, didn't he? That's why you punched me, to make a distraction?" Tali asked, face filled with anger.

Helandrin stayed silent.

"It doesn't matter; nobody will harbor him. Might as well have put a noose around his neck."

Helandrin grimaced. It was the same argument he had made, but hearing it from Tali's mouth filled him with disgust.

"Lord Akh is here," Tali said, fishing the key to Helandrin's cell out of his pocket.

He opened the cell and walked up to Helandrin.

The burly man undid his chains and dragged him away from his prison, and threw him to the ground.

"Get up," Tali commanded.

Helandrin complied.

Tali grabbed him with one hand and dragged him through the cave's labyrinth and out of the entrance, which shined with daylight.

Then, let go, gesturing for Helandrin to follow on his own.

On either side of them were guards posted; he couldn't escape.

Helandrin complied, following Tali to his small mansion where a portly man with a clean-shaven face stood. His attire screamed of social power; gold threads over royal blues.

Lord Akh, Helandrin's his master.

The man gestured for Helandrin to join four other men who stood in a line.

Three of them seemed to be from Sali, while one was...Yjraith?

"What did you do?"

"I insulted the queen." The solemn man said.

Guards kicked the five slaves to their knees and attached their chains to a hook a few feet away.

Every single slave in the cave came out to watch.

It was then Helandrin realized what was going on. They were going to be executed as a show of power.

Frantically, he started clawing at his chains, trying to loosen them enough to escape.

Tali smiled at his futile attempt. He must have thought that no slave would be strong enough to budge the obsidian collars.

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He was wrong; it was slight, but the more Helandrin pulled, the looser the collar got, but it wouldn't save him in time.

A scroll appeared in front of Tali, a Carrier.

Tali opened the scroll and, thankfully, read it aloud; all of Kraetez spoke the same language, but the scripts were a different story.

"A slave from your mine has escaped. A settlement known as new Learu City has freed him."

Helandrin looked up in surprise. Someone freed Daiez. Good men still exist. Helandrin had to help them.

Tali simply laughed and chided Helandrin about how Daiez killed an entire city.

A newfound strength surged through Helandrin as he pulled his collar harder.

After he stopped laughing, Tali unsheathed his sword from his waist and stabbed the man furthest to the right.

As the slave died, his eyes started to glow; an insanity speech.

The dying man turned towards Helandrin.

"The king of Hellfire must rise. In his unwinnable quest, he must be aided by the most honorable of Tidebringers!" Was the insanity speech talking about Helandrin? No, that was insane; they were meaningless dribble.

"Helandrin!" Azstrik, his pledgeborn yelled inside his mind. "Find the strength, and make the pledge!"

Immediately, Helandrin knew what pledge to make. The same one he'd dreamed about since his slavery started.

Helandrin pulled even harder as Tali killed the second man, and surprisingly, he also had an insanity speech.

"The Warrior of Storms grows tired of forging death. In his soul he must find a new quest! He must forge peace!"

Helandrin heard a small crack come from the collar, but it hadn't yet broken.

Tali beheaded the third man, who also had an insanity speech;

"The Golden King of Cowards must find the courage to fight for truth and justice!" The slave screamed.

Helandrin could see a small crack down the middle of his collar.

Tali killed the final man who yelled a final insanity speech.

"The Elevated One must leave behind all that he knows. Justice calls him, and he must answear!" The man screamed.

Finally, Tali turned his attention to Helandrin.

The commander held his blade high in the air, ready to strike Helandrin down at any moment.

Helandrin pulled as hard he could. The crack expanded, and, for a moment, it seemed like all time slowed.

"Pledge!" Azstrik yelled.

"I pledge to break the shackles binding every slave in Kraetez!"

Helandrin's skin exploded with golden mist. He breathed it in, making his skin glow bright like amber.

Time began again. Tali tried to cut Helandrin in half, but the blade got stuck barely an inch into his skin.

Helandrin smiled, feeling power swell inside him.

He grabbed Tali's sword and used it as a handle to throw him away.

Helandrin stood, feeling the winds of freedom on his face.

"Helandrin!" Azstik yelled out to him.

"Hey, bud." Helandrin greeted, with misty eyes.

"It's not over yet," Azstrik warned. Helandrin looked over; Tali was getting up. Helandrin smiled.

"Azstrik, blade!" He commanded, hand held forward.

A bead of water appeared in his palm before melting into the shape of a long gleaming trident; Helandrin's Devilblade.

He pointed the weapon towards Tali, who looked at him with shock, seeing for the first time that Helandrin wasn't lying about his time as a soldier. The gesture meant to challenge someone to a duel.

"Be careful," Azstik warned in his mind, "You're out of practice."

"I'll be fine," Helandrin replied.

Tali stood up and accepted the duel.

"I fight so the innocent may survive!" Helandrin screamed, eyes glowing, reciting the first pledge, the one that all Tidebringers must forge before charging toward him.

Tali tried to slash, but Helandrin used the Ocean Arcane to push himself out of the way.

Helandrin stabbed Tali with his trident, breaking his armor and sending him falling to the ground again.

To his credit, Tali got up quite quickly for a man that just been stabbed by a trident.

He tried to attack Helandrin with a series of furious slashes, but the former slave simply held his trident in the air, summoning a wall of water that stopped every attack in place.

Helandrin dropped the wall of water and stabbed Tali a few times while dancing around him.

Tali tried to punch, but Helandrin threw his trident in the air again, wrapping water around Tali's arms and legs that had so much pressure they acted as shackles.

Helandrin gave Tali one last odious look before driving his trident through the man's heart.

Helandrin then turned to stare at Akh, who ran as soon as he did. Helandrin pointed his trident at him, pulling the man's blood back, an advanced and mostly unusable trick of the Tidebringers.

Akh fell over, dead, barely making a sound.

Helandrin walked over to his corpse and fished out a map inside his breast pocket.

He looked at it. Akh had circled the ruins of an old castle and labeled it New Learu City. It would take a few days for him to get there. How did Daiez arrive so fast?

He rode the Momument Beasts of the Deep. Azstrik explained.

Helandrin always forgot that was an option since it wasn't available to him. The monument beasts of the deep were always apprehensive to have Tidebringers ride them. Not aggressive, more confused, like they thought that Tidebringers were above them.

Helandrin turned to face the other slaves. He pounded his trident on the ground, making shackles for all the guards and servants out of ice. "Those will melt in a day's time!" He told them.

He walked over to the group of slaves.

Helandrin pounded the ground again, using water to cut their obsidian chains.

He held his hand forward, making a couple hundred beads of what looked like insanly blue ice, and floated one to each of the slaves.

"That's a Protection of The Deep. It can only be made by Tidebringers. It won't melt or freeze your hand, Go to Ilra, show it to a soldier, and they'll protect you. I can't guarantee who you find will accept slaves, but it's your greatest chance of surviving."

The slaves nodded and started forming groups to journey.

Helandrin then walked to the nearby lake and jumped in. Tidebringers didn't need to breath, allowing them to travel through the undersea; all the open water under Kraetez connected to every river and lake.

A slave was going to save a king.