"Begin."

The sorcerer Edwuin was not the first of his black hearted kind I had faced.

I had no intention of slaying King Scarl if it could have been avoided.

I held no such reservations about his champion.

The same instant King Scarl's lips touched to signal the star of the duel, I pushed a small charge of my aura straight down. The billowing folds of my dress concealed it until it struck the black stone of the proving grounds and a plume of dark gray smoke enveloped my person.

I did not wear the dress for my own vanity. It was heavy and made of entirely too much fabric, but it allowed me to do all manner of things without my opponent being able to notice.

From my shroud of smoke, I could see out but he could not see in. I kept my hands tucked within my long sleeves and began shaping my aura at my fingertips. What he chose to do next would tell me how far I would need to go to ensure my victory.

The heels of Edwuin's boots were backed all the way into the ring of fire that surrounded our arena. Due to his manner of dressing, I could see nothing of him but his beady little eyes. With an exhalation, his left hand became covered in a sickly green light that crystallized into a blade of manifested aura.

"Fool." I said under my breath.

A flash of the same green light hit the ground under his feet and he launched himself towards me at a speed I had not anticipated. I positioned the ten gray orbs I had channeled through my fingers around my body. Dashing out of my smoke, I allowed my opponent to see me launch one from the center of my stomach.

He slid to a stop just before the flames on my side of the arena and used his aura covered hand to knock my orb down to the ground. Then, with his other hand, sent a streak of his power straight towards my middle.

He's trying to block my channel. I realized, surprised by such an amateur strategy from my opponent.

Sorcerers were vile, not stupid. That left only one explanation for his decision.

He was inexperienced.

I willed all of my orbs through my dress to my left hand with the exception of one. Pulling up my sleeve, I revealed the single moon as Gresh called them held firmly in my open palm. Then, I did the most foolish thing I possibly could have done and rushed straight towards my opponent.

He took the bait.

When I reached striking distance, I feinted with my exposed hand and he raised his own to meet it. Then, I dipped my shoulders and sent the other nine orbs that were concealed within my dress out of my sleeve. They impacted him on the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, and chin. He collapsed in a heap atop the black stone of the proving grounds, temporarily unable to move.

"Ten-moons!" Gresh shouted from somewhere beyond the flames.

With the wave of a finger, I prepared to end his life. The high of channeling my power decided to wash over me then and I hesitated. During my attack, his hood had fallen and I used my free hand to uncover the face of my opponent.

"I yield. I yield!" Edwuin shouted, my tenth moon burning the skin in the middle of his forehead. His face now uncovered, I looked down at a boy, his face still round with youth.

He came from the most vile group of people that existed. They had stolen our magic, killed thousands of sorceresses in defense of their thievery, and were so power mad they were prone to slaughter entire cities on a whim. Yes, I wanted to kill him despite his cries of submission, but he was a boy. If I pushed my moon through his skull and burned his life away, what would I be?

I released the hold on my power and my moon turned to dust and trickled down onto Edwuin's face.

The ring of fire around the metal platform guttered out and died.

"You disgrace me by freely submitting to avoid death, Edwuin of the sky spire. Relieve me of your presence and never return to my lands or you will be treated for what you are. A coward." King Scarl commanded.

Edwuin climbed to his feet and then using the same method he had used to rush towards me, he launched off the platform with a green flash, screaming. "Now!"

Needles of yellow aura appeared out of thin air and streaked towards King Scarl and his men. Uncountable sounds of impact rapidly sounded through the mountain air and a moment later, the only one left standing was The King.

"Assassins!" Gresh shouted, bounding over to me.

The section of air on the left side of the summit shifted.

"Glamor!" I shouted, shaping my moons on my fingertips once again.

Eight Sorcerers appeared atop the summit. They wore the same concealing cloaks that Edwuin had, but by their eyes, I could tell they were not of the same youth and inexperience my opponent had been.

"You should not have done that." King Scarl growled, rolling his shoulders and shrugging out of his own massive cloak. He had the same fashion sense as his son. He raised his tree trunk sized wrists to his mouth and tore through his skin with his teeth, leaving a streak of streaming blood in his long gray beard.

Scarl's blood pooled into his raised palms and took shape. Two axes, each the size of me, formed in his massive hands. Linked at the end of each respective pommel by a length of chain, he spread his feet into a ready stance and snapped the chain straight. "Mine own son, will you join your King who is also your Fatier in battle?"

"Other than slaying you myself, there is nothing I want more," Gresh answered. I hadn't seen him cut himself the way the King had, but by the blood stained snow under his feet, the fact that a loin cloth gave little room for hiding weapons, and the curved sword he held in a ready position, I assumed he had.

"Ten-moons. You have succeeded, my people shall begin relations with your Mothers. You are free to leave." Scarl said, looking at me over one of his massive shoulders.

"King Scarl, I have an additional request." I said, looking at the group of nine black hearted sorcerers. Edwuin had rejoined them, his face still uncovered. Something about the numbers on each side of what was sure to be a dramatically violent affair did not sit right in my mind. Two against nine was not balanced, after all.

"Speak it, little one."

"I would fight along side you and yours, if you would have me?"

A wicked smile stretched across Gresh's bearded face. "Fatier, please. Ten-moons is capable of much greater violence than she has shown. "

"I will take that as a compliment." I said.

"Your Mother's have taught you well. Hezbelthorag gives fire to those that give their might to their allies," One of the sorcerers raised his hand and shot a single needle of yellow power streaking towards the King, "It is good that we share enemies, but I must warn you," The King snapped his gaze from me and caught the crystallized aura with his teeth. He looked down at me again, the glow of the yellow needle casting savage shadows on the lines of his face. A fearsome smile spread. "If you wish to be useful, I hope you are fast. I shall kill them quickly."

Scarl crunched the aura into dust with his teeth. Then, atop the summit that held the Hezbelths sacred grounds, war broke out.

Before I could take more than a step toward the treacherous sorcerers, my vision blurred and I fell.

I came back to myself and I actually fell.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

My vision didn’t waiver, I didn’t lose my sight, I actually hit the ground.

I found myself on the floor of a hall made of some strange black material. Gray doors lined both walls and the one to my right shut not a second after I had opened my eyes.

I was in The Well.

Cold fear wound itself down my spine

I have been watching you, child. The lich's decrepit voice echoed in my mind. It made my head hurt to think about how something could echo in my mind when I was in my mind.

“Use your head Autumn, you are already in it.” I said aloud to myself. It was nothing but fear that had made me think the Lich could be within The Well. It had seen me through a memory, yes, but it had projected itself in the bathroom. Baring some strange reality where everything I knew to be real was my own illusion or unless I had gone mad to the point that I had forgotten I was mad, I was nearly certain the bathroom did not exist in my head.

Assuming that an undead terror was not going to suddenly appear and drain the life from me, I took a deep breath and allowed my fear to unwind. I knew I hadn’t gotten back in the bathtub. "I am asleep."

Panic took its turn to wind through me. I had fallen asleep with Sam outside, my door unlocked, and Anna returning with more food. The list of dangers those things posed to me while being unconscious was longer than my longing for another bite of the tender meat that had been in the stew. Yet again, it only occurred to me that I did not know how to leave The Well voluntarily when I found myself trapped in it. I pinched myself on the arm. When I didn't find myself suddenly on my bed, I did it again.

Nothing.

I stood up and turned to the gray door on my left. Mezalina Anilazem. The name of the woman I had been appeared in my mind and a vision of her running behind the behemoth who I knew to be King Scarl. Where had she been? Who and what the fuck was Hezbelthorag? Why were there sorcerers in the Mother's domain? If Edwuin's ruse had succeeded and Mezalina had died, would there be an X over this door like there had been over Reyna's?

I didn't know. I couldn't know. Anyone who had such answers were very, very, very far away. The conviction I had for leaving earlier had weakened and I didn't know if I still intended to see it through.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do when they were faced with questions that hurt to try an answer. I distracted myself by entering the memory of another person.

King Scarl had not been lying.

When I saw a man large enough to barely still be considered a man begin to run, I thought it a safe assumption that he would not be able to move very fast.

The sorcerers had made the same assumption.

We were both wrong.

King Scarl took three heavy steps and jumped. He came down, axes first, onto the tight grouping of sorcerers. Two, one on each axe, crumpled to the ground and did not move again. The King spun on his bare heels, bringing his blood weapons up and across the body of a third sorcerer that had not dashed away fast enough. All three pieces of him hit the ground and began to stain the snow.

I had seen violence before. Death and gore was not new to me, but the savage mass that was the King of the Hezbelths was a force of brutality the likes of which I wished to never see again. He turned his gaze to the sky and roared, sounding more beast than man.

A cloud of snow, undoubtedly stirred up by one of the remaining sorcerers, swallowed the King and I lost sight of him.

Gresh streaked past me, dragging his massive sword behind him. It carved through the snow and threw an arc of sparks in its wake. He disappeared into the pluming white cloud and I was alone.

All ten of my fingers readorned with a moon, stop calling them that. I reminded myself, I had a plan. I would cover myself in glamor and find my way behind the enemy. Between my power and the father and son's incredible capacity for war, we would grind the enemy to dust.

Beginning to move, just before I disappeared into the snow, a flash of green light appeared at my feet and I fell. I hit the ground. My momentum should have sent me sliding over the loose snow, but a strange tugging sensation in my right foot stopped my weight from carrying me forward.

I looked down and was suddenly grateful my feet were numb from the cold.

A spike of sickly green light pierced through the bottom of my boot and out the top of it.

"Edwuin," I called, knowing immediately which snake I had been struck by. "Face me, you coward!"

The face of an angry little boy appeared above me as he released his glamor. When he spoke, the pitch of his voice was high and shaking. "Lets see how clever you are when you don't have a foot to channel from. You should have killed me when you had the chance."

I bit my tongue to prevent myself from smiling.

"Before I end your miserable life, I will give you a choice," Edwuin said, sounding nowhere near as eloquent as I imagined he thought he did. "Tell me why the whores that call themselves the mothers are interested in the Hezbelths and I shall kill you quickly. Refuse, and I will send my aura up through your veins until your heart explodes."

"Edwuin? There is something you should know."

"What?" He snapped, his voice cracking.

"The difference between you and I, is that I learn from my mistakes." I said. He had taken my bait during our duel and thought that I channeled through my navel and my palms. When I had bested him and showed him mercy, which had undoubtedly been influenced by the high I received from manifesting my aura, I had let him live. Once the battle had begun, he had sought me out and made the same mistake of attempting to close my channel instead of trying to kill me outright. He could have. He had caught me completely off guard.

I, on the other hand, had let him live.

Edwuin laughed. "I have you dead to rights you ignorant wench, what mistake could I poss. . ."

The sorcerer could not finish his sentence as one of my moons burned a hole straight through his head and out the back of his skull. Edwuin fell back onto the snow and died, his aura dissipated into a cloud of green dust. The wound in my foot, no longer blocked by anything, began to bleed.

"Fatier!" I heard Gresh's savage voice scream within the swirling cloud of snow.

I could not stand, I would be lucky if I did not lose my foot, but just because I had won a battle did not mean the war had been won. Blood loss making me feel thin and weak, I used the last of my strength to launch my moons to the top of the cloud of snow. They spun according to the waves of my fingers, creating a vortex that pulled the snow back up into the sky. I opened both my hands as wide as I could and the force I generated sent the snow in every direction, clearing the cover from where the King and Gresh had rushed into.

Seven bodies, in various states of dismemberment lay in a crimson and black arc around King Scarl. The massive man was suspended off the ground by spires of crystallized yellow aura that pierced through his stomach and out of his back and chest. Gresh looked up at his father from his knees, tears rolling down a furious face.

"The sorcerer!" I screamed, seeing that last of our black hearted enemy fleeing towards the edge of the summit. There was nothing I could do to stop him. All I could do was watch as he disappeared over the edge of the summit.

"Gresh," I heard King Scarl growl. "On your feet. There is still time."

"No, it is not supposed to be like this. We will take you to the healers."

"I'll be dead before they can clean my wounds," The king snapped, every muscle of his massive body tensing. "Face me."

Gresh rose to his feet and picked his sword up off the ground but did not ready himself. "I am not ready."

King Scarl screamed, every corded muscle of his massive body flexed, and the spires piercing into him shattered into uncountable slivers of yellow energy. He dropped to a knee in a pool of his own blood, heavy breaths wracking his body. "None of us where, it's how it goes. I killed my own Fatier when I was but nine. now, Face me as an equal and prove to Hezbelthorag that your blood is stronger than mine!"

Gresh wiped his tears and raised his sword. His father rushed him, leaving a trail of blood in his wake and pounced like he had on the sorcerers.

Prince Gresh became a King.

His strike had been true, ending things quickly for his Fatier. I began crawling towards the field of carnage, my only knowledge of what I had just witnessed coming from incredibly insufficient notes about the Hezbelths.

Gresh dropped back to his knees and began painting himself with his fathers blood. Before I could reach him, He burst into flames. The fire towered above him, spreading out over the slain king and the ruined bodies that surrounded them.

Still I crawled, knowing I would need help to heal my foot.

The fire died in a burst of black smoke. Gresh sat on the gray stone of the snowless summit.

The bodies were gone. King Scarl’s remains were gone.

Gresh had grown to the size of his father.

"Ten-Moons," He said in a voice that sounded like hammers beating upon anvils. "You have seen what none have seen in nearly one hundred years," He opened his eyes that were now the same crimson color his father's had been. "Do you feel the fires of Hezbelthorag now?"