The lord commander looked down into the valley below, smiling as he inspected his army preparing for war. Wearing his brother's old armor, astride his brother's least-favored horse, the second son of Titus Greylance congratulated himself on a job well done.

The siege was about to begin; his army was prepared, the officers were briefed, the engines prepared. Kevyn adjusted a strap on his breastplate, simple Morseran steel engraved with the family crest. So like Jon to discard perfectly good armor in favor of something slightly flashier and more expensive. The horse, too. Ironshanks might have been old but the beast had seen war at its worst and been singularly unimpressed, bearing riders with the same silent, graying dignity he had worn since Kevyn was only a boy. Fury, the headstrong warhorse Jon had chosen, had yet to see his first battle. Nothing would do but for Kevyn's brother to ride through Baencroft's gates astride a horse as wild as war itself.

A pity he'll sleep through the whole thing, Kevyn mused fondly.

Kevyn was the younger of the two Greylance brothers but it was he and not Jon, the eldest, who had received the command of the army their father had sent. The insult to their house when Alcrin had renounced his marriage to Mariana had been great, but to lock her up like an animal... the king himself had given father leave to punish the duke as he saw fit, and that punishment was to be delivered by Kevyn.

Preferably on the tip of my sword, Kevyn brooded as the morning broke, the sun rising at his back like a banner of light. His brother shared the sentiment, though he would never have admitted to sharing anything with Kevyn. Jon was the elder, father's heir by tradition if not by law. Still, every village idiot from here to Wyvern's Run knew Jon had never once beaten Kevyn at kingsboard, never matched his marks under the tutors, never shown his little brother's brilliance in tactics or governance. Jon was no fool, but his temper was great and his self-control nonexistent. Titus Greylance had never trusted his firstborn with authority. It was Kevyn, not Jon, who had received overall command. Jon had been entrusted with the vanguard, first in the assault.

“First in glory,” Kevyn's brother had boasted.

“First to die,” the unspoken reply went.

To Kevyn, the implication was clear. Whatever his brother's faults, he still loved Jon. It would break his brother's heart to tell learn the truth of father's machinations, but the younger Greylance could be devilishly subtle. There was no need, especially when Jon's own nature could be used to protect him.

It had been an easy thing to find a comely, competent woman among the camp followers. Easier still for her to lace Jon's wine. Kevyn's brother liked his drink strong and had never known much in the way of restraint. After that, Kevyn had only needed a quiet word with Jon's officers. With luck, the Greylance heir would stumble from his tent long after the castle had been cracked and sacked, Mari saved and her husband in chains. Jon would be furious, but it was a price Kevyn would gladly pay to keep his conscience clear.

Besides, he fancied he could hear his brother's snores from half a mile away, and that was always worth a laugh. Mari had always teased Jon for his snore. Kevyn shook himself free of reverie. He'd saved one sibling. Now for the next.

"Matt, how stand your men?"

"Well, Sir Commander. We await your orders."

Captain of the Morseran detachment, Mathieu Coras was at first glance only a common soldier of that breed. His plate and arms were no different from those of his troops, his face unremarkable but for the lines four decades of war had etched there. Yet it was he the Morserans had chosen as their leader, and he that sat at Kevyn's councils.

"I beg you call me Kevyn, Matt, as I said earlier. Such formalities come uneasily from your tongue, captain, and I would have you at your ease."

"I worked hard to form the habit, Sir Commander... Kevyn. Many of high blood demand such things and it does not come easily to my people." The captain scratched a scar on his cheek and frowned. "I still hold that mine should be first through the breach. The fighting will be hardest there, and no men are harder than those of the mountain."

"And I still hold that your troops should be held back in the event Alcrin tries something," the young lord replied curtly. "He is a fool, but a fool may have good advisors. He may have cavalry waiting in the hills. He may have hired a contingent of your own countrymen. If anything unexpected should happen I want my options open."

"As you say, Sir Kevyn."

Kevyn sighed and accepted he'd never get the Morseran to completely dispense with honorifics. "Tell me, Matt. Should Morserans be in Alcrin's pay, how would your men fare?"

"Fare, Sir Kevyn?"

"Their own countrymen? Perhaps their own brethren? Would that not... blunt their swords, so to speak?"

"There are no Morserans in Alcrin's pay."

"Can you be sure?" Kevyn pressed.

"I can." The Morseran's tone brooked neither argument nor further pursuit. "Even if there were, Sir Kevyn, we would do our duty. Our deaths and theirs would serve Morseros. All blood returns to the mountain."

"Indeed," Kevyn said, not knowing to what he agreed. "You must tell me more of your people, some day."

"Perhaps, Sir Kevyn." The commander smiled at the old warrior's lack of enthusiasm. Morserans were infamously tight-lipped about both themselves and their culture.

Something echoed through the valley, a bellowing roar that seemed to darken the air. Kevyn was not a superstitious man but his mind went immediately to the forest. The borders of the Weymaerii were said to be unusually near the forest's edge this far south. His thoughts stirred uneasily, the drifts of childhood memory churning up old stories of monsters under the trees. The urge to steal a glance to the north was overwhelming but Kevyn reined it in. It would not do for the men to see their commander nervous.

The roar came again, and a great rumble as of grinding stone. This time Kevyn oriented on the sound. It echoed up from Baencroft's walls, coming to his ears like distant thunder.

"Matt, look to your men. I think something unexpected is about to happen."

Then the fortress's outer walls exploded outward and Kevyn was proven right.

Most of the stone fell into the moat, sending a heavy tide of water into the fields that knocked many from their feet. Even the smallest shard was massive, many times the weight of a man, and those few pieces flung beyond the moat left many dead behind them. Agony rose from the ranks like steam and hung above the valley like a shroud.

The demon laughed as it strode forward, basking in the pain like a man savoring the touch of warm water on his hands. It had been long, so long since it had strode the world. Not since men had first discovered its kind lurking in the shadows of their souls. Once, long ago, it had walked amongst these mewling creatures. They had worshiped it, whole generations sacrificed in hopes of turning its attentions away. Then the wizards had come into power and knowledge and with these weapons they had cast the demon and its kindred out.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It had come close to returning through the ages, never more so than when the little bauble's mistress had called it forth in hope of the impossible. It had stalked the witch through her nightmares for years, carefully nurturing the garden of miseries it had planted in the ragged soil of her mind. In the end that gambit failed but had not been without merit. The demon hefted the still-screaming fragment of her soul in one lesser claw and pulled its muzzle into a hideous travesty of a smile.

Now it was free again, one of the wizard-kind used to clothe it in glorious, living flesh. It was free, and it was hungry.

The demon folded its hands in a mockery of prayer, blessed the meal before it, and gestured. A profane benediction descended on the battlefield, teasing into countless minds as a sourceless murmur that unlatched the caged, feral lunacy hidden in the human spirit.

The thousands of men and women before the gates of Baencroft had come to war against these walls, many of them expecting to die. Whether they were prepared to do so was another matter entirely. There were many people at those gates. Men and women, cowards and heroes, monsters and martyrs, not a one perfect or without a chance for redemption. A common gathering of humanity that was ultimately no different from any other. They came to war, some willingly, some by force, and found madness instead.

Many who beheld the demon in its terrible glory and felt the touch of its will lost their minds: many turned and fled, many turned blades on their fellows or themselves, and many descended into obscenities that could only be described as a living hell. What had moments ago been an ordered army devolved in a storm of raging insanity as the beast's will took hold, a subtle whisper in their minds that opened the floodgates of death and depravity.

With a deceptively slow, loping stride the demon plunged into the havoc it had created and took hold of its first victim, a man whose leg had been pulped by one of the great shards. It raised him up slowly, almost gently, ignoring the gnatlike stings of pain as a few crazed mortals attacked. None of them bore anything but common iron: moments after piercing its hide such weapons succumbed to corruption, veins of rust spreading as the rot took hold, reducing them to useless lumps. Only such a blade as the death's child had borne could harm it, and though the bitter tang of that steel was present it was far away, across a churning sea of humanity. There would be time enough for that later, the demon told itself, and busied its mind with fresh agonies to visit on these countless playthings. Later. For now, it would feed.

Kevyn couldn't believe his eyes when the creature emerged from the fortress, a monster that defied explanation even as reality seemed to revolt around it. It had gestured and suddenly Kevyn's armor had blazed, burning as though he had stepped into a furnace. He howled in pain even as his horse screamed and reared, throwing him from the saddle.

The air was driven from his lungs as he landed hard and as quickly as that the Morseran steel cooled, its smoking edges the only sign it had happened. He struggled upright, thinking for a moment to tear the plate from his body, but forgot the pain of his burns as his gaze fell upon the army, tearing itself apart even as the demon feasted.

A howl so pained it barely seemed human assaulted his senses. Kevyn turned to see his steward, an elderly man who did little but prepare his meals and tend to his belongings, come stumbling from the depths of his tent. The old man was covered with long ranks of scratches. Even as Kevyn watched the steward reached up and drew his fingers down his face, leaving four bloody trails. One finger crossed an eye and burst it in its socket. His remaining eye whirled madly, setting on the steward's former master. With an eerie wail the old man raised bloody, grasping hands and charged. Kevyn scrambled for his sword but there was no time. In a moment the old man was on him, slick fingers scrabbling at armor. There was a sudden, chiming rasp that ended in a fleshy chucking sound. The steward's head fell forward into Kevyn's lap, the rest of him falling away.

Kevyn turned, shocked beyond words, and locked eyes with Mathieu. The old soldier's sword was bared and bloody. The Morseran's armor was smoking as well, but if it discomforted the old soldier he gave no sign. "Sir Kevyn. As you said, something unexpected has happened. By your command, I must deal with it."

"What... I..." Kevyn nodded helplessly, struggling to his feet to follow as the mercenary hurried back to his small block of troops, all miraculously unaffected by the demon's spell. His eyes grew wide as the screaming finally registered. All around him the madness swirled, and it seemed that none but he and the Morserans had been spared.

"Mathieu, that creature..."

"A demon, Sir Kevyn. Alcrin has summoned a demon to destroy your army." The old warrior smiled grimly. "And it does such work well."

"A demon? Truly?" Kevyn asked. "How can you know this?"

Mathieu gestured at the carnage around them and shrugged. "It matters not. We are still here to retrieve your sister and chastise her husband. We must destroy the beast first, that is the only change."

"The only change?" Kevyn shook his head and laughed. "It is true, what the common folk say of your kind."

The old warrior smiled wolfishly and spoke the maxim himself. "That a man with a sword fears little, but a Morseran with a sword fears nothing? Tis true, Sir."

They had reached the ranks of Mathieu's fellow soldiers. As Kevyn looked at them, he realized that these men and women were not afraid but rather... eager. That was the word that came to Kevyn's mind. In a flash of realization the young lord understood that the adage was more than a pithy saying, it was true: when these people looked on the demon they saw not a terror, not a dark god or a monster, only glory. Down in that valley was a chance to set their names in song for years to come and each yearned to take it.

Mathieu drew his sword and raised it high, seamed eyes bright. "Soldiers! How sound the drums of war?"

"Fast and eager, captain." The Morseran reply was delivered in perfect unison, their hands clutching eagerly at their weapons. "The drums call."

Mathieu nodded, and then turned to Kevyn with a wolfish smile. "Will you join us, Sen Kevyn? Will you answer the call with us?"

In answer the young lord set a hand to his own blade, an unornamented hand-and-a-half sword of common steel, grinning back as the soldiers around him roared with approval. Their madness must have been infectious: the fear Kevyn had felt had been swept away and replaced with molten rock. In that moment he was one of them, one of the greatest soldiers of his world, and no one could stand before them and live.

"Draw then," Mathieu bellowed. "And let us answer!"

A chorus of shouts and blades ringing free from their sheaths replied. Kevyn's own sword leapt skyward seemingly of its own volition, his voice mingling with a hundred others in an eager cry. They drew apart, slowly building to a run, each soldier haloed in a ring of space that would soon be filled with the dance of steel. The seething mass below them did little to react; most were lost in the horror of their own minds.

Most, but not all. Kevyn had wondered earlier whether any had survived but those girded with Morseran plate, and as he approached the maddened remnant of his army it proved otherwise.

Fragments had coalesced from the churning mass, rocks caught in a hurricane that nonetheless refused to move. These men and women were of sterner stuff, shielded by faith in gods real or imagined, or otherwise protected from the demon's working. They banded together, heroism, faith, and sheer mulishness all cleaving together to defy the creature and its crazed victims no matter how hopeless the fight seemed. Brave sinners all, they fought on despite the odds, knights and commoners alike battling their way through milling victims of demonic sorcery to get away from the castle. As they saw the Morseran soldiers approaching many of these turned back, raising their weapons to join the charge. Kevyn couldn’t decide whether they were all, in their own way, mad as well.

The demon looked up from its newest plaything, a mewling female still somehow whole amidst the carnage, eyes furrowed at the sudden, searing light of hope that had risen over the battlefield like a second sun. A pain twinged behind its eyes as though something had snapped in the glare of that light. This would not do, not at all. The day was young, and the beast was not yet ready to deal with such unpleasantness. It gave a dismissive swipe, spat a word of power, and returned to its play.

Many had died of one unspeakable act or another but more had simply fallen into madness, and it was these that the demon reached now. Giggling, shrieking masses of raving lunatics seized blades, stones and even the broken limbs of the fallen. They hefted their weapons and coiled together once again as an army, not of conscripts but of the damned. They thundered up the slope, hooting and gabbling with crazed bloodlust, a red tide rushing to engulf the last bulwarks of sanity.

The armies rushed towards each other beneath the walls of Baencroft, war unlike any seen for thousands of years about to take root and bloom. Past those walls a single woman, blind and lost in misery, wiped tears from her face and turned. The demon's presence, a great abscess in her mind's eye, had suddenly pulsed as though a candle had been lit amidst the eye of a hurricane.

Nathan...

Nathan opened his eyes, feet sinking to the ankle in ashes as he stood. A burned waste spread around him, the tumbled wreckage of gigantic trees the only feature in an otherwise barren world. He crouched, taking cinders up in a hand that he noted was no longer missing a finger. He let the ashes go, watching as they formed grey streaks in the howling wind, and smiled as recognition dawned. This was where his nightmares had begun, where the world had burned while the demon tormented him with fire and ruin.

A good place to start.