Random Stories and Fragments

Gorim Karaz sighed with relief as he stretched, taking in the sight of the planning room. Dwarves bustled about, doing errands and going about their daily tasks. Two dwarves were perusing the maps strewn about the table, eating as they did so. Watching crumbs litter the maps, Gorim thought with amusement that he couldn't really blame them, as the planning room was also the dining room, at least for now. The still relatively new settlement of Khadar was his and many others' pride and joy, but there were still many things to improve.

“Gorim! You gonna sit there with that goofy look all day?” The words startled Gorim from his reverie and he glanced around with a wry smile. “Aye, Thoris, I'm listening now. What were your thoughts on the ugly little buggers?”

Thoris and several other dwarves stood clustered around a map of Khadar and its surroundings. Thoris's finger thumped down the crudely sketched image of a fort to the east of Khadar. “I'm thinking that we go in, crack some skulls, then burn it all to the ground to get rid of the smell.”

The other dwarves all turned to hear Gorim's response. A veteran of the battles against the Hippus during the Emergence, he had been chosen by Thorne to head the new settlement of Khadar and its southern sister, Kharazin.

Gorim gazed thoughtfully at the image of the goblin fort, as if he could divine the future from it. “So far we haven't needed to expand to the eastern lands. But you're right, eventually we are going to have to do something about the smelly little greenskins.”

Gorim nodded, his decision made. He looked around at the dwarves gathered around the table. “Spread the word that we need volunteers. There should be no shortage when you explain the goblin-bashing.”




“A goblin's head is no iron vein! Your pick will punch through thick greenskin skulls much easier than rocks! Save your strength, swing faster but lighter!” Gorim surveyed the training yard. Groups of dwarves swung pickaxes at stuffed dummies, slamming them into imaginary heads and chests over and over. Nodding with satisfaction, he gestured for the training sergeant to carry on. Seeing Thoris, Gorim waved him over.

“What news from the borders?” asked Gorim.

“The elves are still in a quiet little uproar about some barbarians massing north of their borders. The savages claim that Orthus himself is going to claim these lands,” Thoris said, looking faintly amused.

“Oh, aye, Orthus is coming, and Bhall is returning to Heaven! Let's hear of more important things.”

Thoris was just about to speak when heated words caught their attention. “...ye can't be bringin' that in here, leave it outside..!” Gorim and Thoris looked over to see a lithe, blond figure pushing past a protesting dwarf. As he approached, the dwarves could see that the figure was a fair-skinned Ljosalfar man, a bow in his hand and a spear strapped to his back. Pacing behind him was the source of the commotion, a silently padding wolf with fierce yellow eyes.

The elf stopped in front of Gorim. “Hail, Gorim Karaz. May your spring be long and your summer fruitful.”

Gorim eyed the tree-hugger up and down. “Sevalar. What is it that you need? I assume you weren't here to enjoy our fine, treeless hills.”
The elf ignored any rudeness in the greeting. “I am here, Master Karaz, to ask for your aid, and that of your people.”

“Oh? Finally decided that good, strong stone houses are much better than that flimsy wood?”

“Not quite, Master Karaz. No, I am here to ask you to aid us in our fight against Orthus and his horde.”

All of the dwarves stared at him in silence for a moment. Then Gorim let out a loud guffaw. “Orthus, eh? Orthus isn't anything but a myth, a tale to tell the whelps who won't do their mining chores. Hah! And my father's the Clown King and my mother's an elf! No offense, of course.”

Sevalar smiled thinly. “Of course. Still, I have seen Orthus with my own eyes. He carries a great flaming axe, and stands two hands taller than any other orc. But even if you do not believe this, there is still the unmistakable truth of a barbarian army marching towards Everhome. My people and I are in desperate need of aid.”

Gorim grumbled thoughtfully at that and stroked his beard . “I'll need to meet with my councilors. As luck would have it, we have already built a force to deal with some ugly savages. Perhaps we will see fit to aim it at your enemies.”




“Are we seriously considering marching and dying for the sake of tree-shagging pixies?” said one councilor heatedly. “We've got to be lookin' after our own!”

Thoris spoke up. “While I've no more love for them than any of you, to be honest, they did help us when we first settled. Why, we'd still be wrestling with some of the peculiarities of the surface if it wasn't for them. Remember those herbal creams?”

All of the dwarves at the table shuddered at this. One of the most memorable of their difficulties was with sunburn. As one dwarf put it, it “made you feel like you were being dipped in magma, and made you look uglier than an orc's mother.” The elves had provided them with an herbal remedy to soothe the affliction, in return for some of the more beautiful gems they had brought with them from the Underhome.

'Still, that was a fair and equal trade. We owe them nothing for that. Plus, they obviously enjoyed our ignorance, with the lot of them secretly grinning and bein' condescending.”

A fresh bout of arguing broke out across the table at these words. Through it all, Gorim sat silently, stroking his beard and listening to the debate. Finally, he spoke.

“I believe it all comes down to one thing. Who would we rather have as neighbors, the pixies, who've done nothing to wrong us and have arguably helped us, or a great big lot of uglies?”

The table fell silent, the councilors lapsing into thoughtful silence. Finally, Thoris nodded, saying “It's as you say. The elves are a damn sight better than a bunch of smelly orcs.”

Gorim looked around the table. 'We're agreed, then? Good, tell the sergeants to ready the squads. Thoris, you're in charge here. I'll leave a detachment just in case. We built our defenses well, though, so there should be nothing to worry about. Kilmorph strengthen us all.” With that, Gorim stood, and left the room, on his way to tell the elf that his call for aid had been answered.

Even in the ensuing bustling chaos before the departure of the troops, a force of goblins was noticed slipping out of the fortress to the east. It was assumed that they were going to join Orthus's horde, and no more was thought of it.

Such is the danger of assumption.

The Succession

Chapter 2: First Move

“Password?” The voice that came out of the darkness of the Farm house’s door was one that none would have expected. It was of the high, urban, Amure elite.

“Free Emrys” was the answer given. Though it had been over a year since the arrest and execution of Lord Emrys of Badger, his name was still a watchword for the council, which now met in secret every few months. The Amure nation was divided, with the cities mainly loyal to the Dain the Magus, and the countryside to the Council. An uneasy peace held between the two sides, each pretending the other didn’t exist. Though Dain had outlawed the Council, and branded any nobles who met in an official manner outlaws, there was nothing much he could do. The shield of Kylorin was too few to move against all the nobles, who now had their own private armies.

Tonights secret meeting was in the cellar of a farm in the outskirts of Nimirail. Presiding was Lord Sandalphone of Singing Tree, Acting head since Lord Emry’s execution.
“Order! This meeting will come to order! By the power vested in me by Junil and Lugus, I hereby decree this meeting open. First order of Business. I have here a request to open discussion on the creation of a Mana node along the Mind/Water intersection. This would allow us a source of mana to field a counter to the Magus’s Sheild of kylorin, which is powered by the palace mana. Of course, this would require some monetary sacrifices from each of us. All in favor?”
A chorus of ayes filled the dark cellar.
“Then the Motion is Passed. Would the Scribe please record the decision.” He took a deep breath. “We now get to the real purpose of tonight’s meeting. I have called us together to decide whether to officially take up arms against the Magus. Should we Choose to, The peasants are ready to rise up. We have the strength to overthrow the magus and establish the council as the leaders of Amur.”
A pause greeted these words, and then the room exploded into Chaos, every noble trying to speak at once.
“Order! Order! We Will have Order!” Lord Sandalphone boomed, his voice magically amplified.
Reluctantly, the Nobles fell silent.
“I call to the Floor Lord Caspar of Mulcarn’s Tear”
“Thank you. Friends, Comrades, the Magus is as much a part of Amurite tradition as the Noble’s Council itself. If we strike against the Magus, we would be guilty of nothing but treason of the basest sort, and so worthy only of admission to the Lord of Hope’s domain. I propose we send envoys to meet with the magus and try to form a compromise. We cannot afford a war, quick as it may be. Thank you”
“Thank you,” Lord Sandalphone Bowed. “Does anyone else have anything to add before we vote one this matter?”
The room stayed quiet.
“No? then Forever hold your peace. On the table in front of you is a quill and a scarp of paper. This will be a secret ballot, for safeties sake. Write Aye or Nay, and hand the scrap of parchment to my servant, who will be coming by with a basket.”
As the nobles did so, a man bearing the livery of the House of the Magus scurried in and whispered into Lord Sandalphone’s ear. The Noble looked up in Shock, and spoke hurriedly.
“This Vote is Moot. The Magus has moved against us. The Shield is on its way. We meet in a month, raise your armies. May Kylorin be with you all until we meet again.” He bowed, and, with a swirl of his crimson cape, strode out.

As the Nobles scattered into the darkness to their respective Fiefdoms, The sound of Horns blew in the distance, and the steady beat of War Drums accompanied the movement of the future of Amure.

Within months, all of Amure would be in flames, divided between the Council and the Magus.

The Succession

Chapter 3: Smoke Rises


“Come Out! Any in there come out or we burn ye down with yer farm” The harsh voice, coarse and uneducated, roused Farmer Jones and his family from their sleep. Still sleep drunk, they stumbled to the door of the small farmhouse that was their lodgings.
As Farmer Jones opened the door, he was stopped by a cold touch to the side of his neck.
“Come out here,” the same voice said. “Kneel”
“Who are you?” Farmer Jones asked the leader of the band of brigands, a short, squat man with a brutish face. “What do you want? I have nothing.”
“Are ye a man of the Magus?”
“P…p please, I’m, I’m just a poor farmer. Please don’t hurt my family.”
“Answer, Fool. Answer, and if your answer be wrong, ye die, and your family with you.”
“Yagus! Yagus! The clatter of a horse’s hooves was heard, and another brigand rode into the courtyard. “Yagus! Gerneral Caswa is almost here! She has a thousand men, and she’s sworn to hunt down all the peasant armies!”
“Keelyn’s Duckies!” the Bandit leader swore, “Well, Farmer, ye luck’s run out.” With a stroke of his sword, he decapitated Farmer Jones and his son, and, yelling, his men grabbed the women and, after lighting the hut on fire, rode off into the night.

General Caswa, Commander of the Sheild of Kylorin, rode into the light of the burning hut. “What happened here?”
“Bandits…”
“Agares’s Breath. again? Do the Nobles really have that little control over their armies?” one of the Optios asked.
“They’re weak, Divided… They can’t pay their armies, and their armies have resorted to paying themselves from the fat of the land.” General Caswa glanced at the bodies of the Farmer and his son and bowed her head. “have them buried properly. We ride on in an hour.”

The Sun rose over the plain, dissipating the heavy fog that had accumulated in the hollows over night. The Shield had ridden nonstop since the Burning hovel, tracking the bandits. The imprint of their hooves in the soft ground were clear, and the banks of the Cevedes river showed clear evidence of a large party of men riding by recently.
As the last of the fog evaporated, One of the scouts appeared in front of the Sheild, fading out of the shadows beneath a large rock.
“General. They are camped about a Lustre northwards. Look, you can see smoke from their camp.” Indeed, smoke rose up in the clear sky, a beacon for all to see.
“How many are they?” the General asked.
“About a hundred, men and women both, armed and wearing the livery of most of the noble houses, but brutish by birth. Run off from their Masters, I’d say. Just brigands, not real soldiers.
“General Caswa looked about, at the tired horses and men. “We rest here. Get the horses watered and the soldiers rested. We strike in three hours.”

“General!” One of the Mind speakers called out.
“Yes?”
“The scouts say that the Bandit camp is placed on the intersection of a ley line. They also say that those with the powers of mind speak, as well as those with influence on water, feel their powers doubling, if not tripling, as they get nearer the camp. We could use this. The bandits would not expect anything like it. We could probably scare them into surrendering.”

Yagus sat in the sun, looking at the bandits napping and talking quietly. He sat on a stone, one of a circle of fallen monoliths. The Hallow was certainly a site of importance before the age of ice, as was testified by the network of painted caves around the hallow, with 21 openings in a circle around the spring. The mouths of all but two would once have been closed shut by the great stones that once stood. On the stones could still be seen ritual carvings and flecks of paint. The one that Yagus always preferred was one which had piles of coins carved into it.
A Shriek woke him from his reverie. A man ran out of one of the caves, gibbering. He looked around, and yelled again, even louder. He fell into a little ball on the ground, whimpering.
Around him, everything stopped, as the bandits wondered what had just happened.
Then another yelled, and fell, clutching his head. And then another. Yagus looked around him in shock, as his entire army went mad with fear. One man stood, fighting the air, parrying and slashing at the demons assaulting him in his mind. A woman next to him gazed in utter rapture in the sky, whispering, asking for forgiveness for having doubted. Another fell to all fours, and growing and bearing his teeth at any who approached him.

Yagus had always doubted the existence of the gods. He had never seen anything to justify the belief in them. But now he believed in them. For, as he looked around at his mad soldiers, he saw among them other people. People he recognized, and some he didn’t. They were all dead and rotting, their arms grasping out at him, and from their mouths came a fearful moaning. In utter terror he turned. Closing on him from behind was the rotting body of Farmer Jones, from this morning. He pulled his sword, and slashed at the rotting corpse. Though the body fell backwards, missing an arm, it quickly rose up again, lurching forwards. Searching for anything to save him from the rapidly closing circle of the dead hordes, Yagus saw an opening, right next to the path that rose up out of the hallow. Sprinting and evading the rotting and clutching arms, he ran up the path. As he cleared the ledge, a fresh moan, which sounded mere feet behind him, game him a fresh burst of energy. And then he saw an armed party of soldiers, arrayed in a line in front of him. He threw themselves at their feet.
“Please, please, save me! Please! I’ll do anything. They’re right behind me. I hear them! Save me!” he sobbed, clutching at the bottom of their robes.
A woman on a horse rode up to where he was lying prone. “Are you the leader of that rabble?”
“yes, but save me!” what didn’t they understand? The horde of dead creatures was fast approaching.
“Hang him. And all the others we caught. The crows will feed well tonight.”

Darkness. Thick and wet after the blinding light of the garden outside. Thick and almost solid, making his breathing difficult, clogging his mouth and nose. Dorgir felt the bile rise in his throat and had to concentrate to keep himself from retching. Reaching inside his rough tunic, he wrapped his fingers around the small leather pouch hanging from his neck by frayed strands of braided black and green cotton. Inside were three coins, all his family had after the long year of drought, and not nearly enough. Still, he had to try.

He was unsteady on his feet and reached out an arm to steady himself. It didn't help: his hand slid across the surface of a wall covered with a thick slime. Jerking back, he lost his balance, fell sharply to the ground and gave in, covering the ground in front of him with the remnants of the waybread he had at daybreak. As his stomach tightened and clenched, heaving its last remains up his burning throat, he began to shiver and tears came to his eyes.

"You can't let them down. You can't. You can't. You can't."

Repeating this, turning it into a chant, a steady drumbeat he could use to slow his racing heart, he wiped his eyes dry, slowly went to one knee, and finally stood. The opressive weight of the darkness was still there, but it was less solid, less a force against which he had to struggle than a foreign medium to move through. And there, some indeterminant distance ahead, not a light so much as a fading, a slightly paler darkness marking the entrance to his goal at the heart of the temple. "You can't. You can't. You can't." He moved--slowly and haltingly, yes--but still he moved.

As he approached, the darkness began to fade into a mist, a silverslick cloak between him and the entrance, finally resolving itself as an archway, beyond which the tunnel took an immediate turn to the right. There was a soft rumbling, sounding almost like whispers. Dorgir took a deep breath and with it exhaled the last of his prior nerves, stepped forward, and turned into a circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. He stopped short, dizzied by the kaleidescope of color that assaulted him, feeling his stomach begin to clench again. He squinted hard, looking for something familiar, some anchor around which to tether his perceptions. He started with his shoes, the sturdy moccasins with his tribal insignia--a black diamond centered in a dark green circle--beaded upon each foot. His right was in pretty good shape, only missing a few beads, but the left had been caught beneath a fallen limb in late Spring the previous year, and only retained a faded echo of the diamond and a few lonely green beads.

That worked: his shoes were his shoes, and thoughts of home helped steady him as well. Calmed, Dorgir expanded his vision, seeing the pale stone of the floor. It was covered with runes and symbols, written in a brilliant green script. At first, Dorgir thought it was some enchantment, a sorceror's fire of some sort; then as his eyes slowly lost their squint and grew accustomed to the light he saw the source of the whispers he heard: carved into the floor were curved troughs whose swift-moving waters flowed into a central well, creating an endless murmur in the background. And the writing was an emerald lichen, brilliant green, fed by those same waters.

As his eyes drifted up the wall in front of him, he saw patches of blues, purples, dark greens, the colors of bruises, of deep water and dark places. Dorgir knew they were made of glass, but they looked disconcertingly like a living liquid, pulsing with echoes of the light in the room whose source was higher yet: circling the room, just below the wooden ceiling supports were a ring of braziers, alternating between small floating balls of fire and glowing coals, from which a thick and pungent smoke drifted. The room felt alive, not energized but living, pulsing and vibrating on its own accord, as if Dorgir was now deep inside something both beautiful and dangerous.

By the far wall were three figures, two standing impassively by a huge white chair upon which the third sat, clothed in a tunic of the deepest green, resting his chin on his clasped hands, his face obscured in shadow. The chair seemed to glow with a pale light, but Dorgir knew it was carved from the bones of some massive beast from the depths of the ocean, taking master craftsmen dozens of years to create an intricate mass of interlaced tentacles. The two standing figures were nude and utterly hairless, thickly muscled men whose pale skin was nearly translucent, and reflected the dark colors from the glass in the walls.

The seated figure straightened suddenly, placing his hands in front of him, and moving his head out of the shadows. There was a glint of gold at his neck, which Dorgir knew was a clasp in the shape of an octopus, holding a black cape in place, the cowl of which was nestled beneath his chin like a cloud. He too was bald, but not hairless: dark eyebrows rested above his eyes. Those eyes! When he first looked into them, Dorgir was frozen, his blood chilled by what he thought he saw. Later, he would convince himself it was a trick of the light, but at the time it seemed the eyes of the other were pure black, lacking any whiteness at all, endless obsidian ovals containing no hint of humanity, let alone compassion.

"And you are?" The voice was soft and dangerous, a whisper that left sailors bloodied and shipwrecked on sun-bleached coral after promising them the pleasures of the flesh. Dorgir swallowed hard. He had rehearsed this many times, and falling to a pose of supplication, head bowed, one hand on his heart, the other palm up across his raised knee, began to recite:

"I am Dorgir, from the Eastern Cape. I come to beg a boon against the drought. My family is dying: there have been no rains since Ches, and Uktar draws near. I am here to beg for water."

During the weeks of travel to the city, as he practiced again and again for this moment, Dorgir was never sure what would happen next, but he was sure something would. Instead, there was silence. Just the constant murmur of the water, the occasional crack from the fires above, and the increasing hammer of his own heart as he felt the blood rush to his face. He looked up: as far as he could tell, nothing had changed across the room: just the three figures and the unwavering strangeness of those eyes.

"Sir ... my Lor ... " Dorgir was unsure how to address this man . "I can pay." He reached inside his shirt, and the next thing he knew, his arms were pinioned painfully behind his back, the sharp edge of what he assumed was a knife tightly angled against his throat. He never saw the two figures move, yet they were now on either side of him, holding him immobile. An eternity intervened. Dorgir dared not breathe nor swallow, for the blade at his neck had already peirced the skin.

Again, the sibilant promise filled the air: "Let him be." The blade disappeared, and Dorgir felt the figures step away, behind him and out of his field of vision entirely. Resisting the urge to turn around or touch the growing wetness he felt on his throat, he again fell to one knee in the pose of supplication, this time with the pouch of coins in his upturned hands. He felt the pouch being lifted away, but little else: in the instant it took him to lift his head, the two pale men were again motionless on each side of the bone chair, and the seated figure was slowly weighing the pouch in his hand.

"This, this is not enough. Not nearly enough."

"It's all I have, all we have. Please ... we will die without water. If we can plant now, we can get one crop in before the deep freeze, one crop is all we need. It will be a hard winter, but we will make it. Please."

"Come now, child, you must have something else to offer. Something of value." Dorgir felt a small soft push behind his eyes. "Yes," he thought, "surely I have something else. Of course." But nothing came to mind.

"Nothing? Not even a memory, a recollection of the Eleiasias sea on a warm day? Or the softness of your first kiss?" Dorgir felt the dizziness return, felt the cold stone beneath his knee slide away from him, felt the room tilt strangely on a new axis. Torn between incomprehension and the growing conviction that whatever the seated figure said was perfectly reasonable, perfectly sage, perfectly sensible, he stammered, "I ... I don't understand."

"Hmmm ... you will. Will you give anything for your boon?"

"Wait ... I don't ... How can you take a memory?"

The voice changed, gained the undertones of a gathering storm, the dark strength of a slate grey sky. "Will. You. Give. Anything?"

Dorgir thought of his family, of the cracked land, the failed crops. "Ye ... Yes."

The softness returned. "Good. We leave in the morning." The figure stood, reached up, draped the cowl over his head, and pulled the black cloack around himself. One solid black figure, a piece of night detached from a distant darkness, flanked by two pale muscled pillars. The eyes glinted from deep within the cowl, dark jewels on a platter of darker velvet, "Be in the southern garden at sunrise."

Dorgir didn't remember how he left the temple, or how he made his way back to the inn. Thoughts of flight played at the edges of his mind, but instead he found himself waiting for the first rays of the sun in the palm lined garden, talking softly to his mount, adjusting and readjusting his saddlebags, idly fingering the tender line on his neck left by the blade. Just as the first blush of dawn reached towards the distant mountains, he heard hoofbeats and, turning, saw three figures walking towards him, each leading a massive horse. In front, again covered in black, was the figure from the previous night. He could only assume the other two were the same as well, although today they wore identically cut tunics of a rough material, one a deep purple, the other the blue of the midnight sky. He could never be sure, but he thought the black-robed figure smiled at him. Dorgir looked closely at his face: his eyes were quite dark, with no distinction between the pupil and the iris, but they were just eyes, surrounded by white. Dorgir felt a little embarrased, and quickly looked away. Wordlessly, the four mounted, and Dorgir led them out of the city and into the glare of the strengthening day.

Dorgir never learned the cultist's name, and in the ten days it took them to go from the city to his home, barely three dozen words passed between them. They rode in silence, made camp in silence, even shared meals without speaking. Sometimes, the one in purple would sing as their horses moved across the land, a deep voice full of resonance, singing hypotic, sonorous songs in a language Dorgir did not recognize. Sometimes, in the middle of the song, the other two would reply in unison creating an eerily contrapuntal chant, and once the man in the black cape brought out a small ocarina shaped like a turtle and played lightly as they rode. When he finished, he replaced the round flute in his cloak and turned to Dorgir. "I first heard that song on a Lanun ship, far from home." Dorgir nodded, unsure of what to say.

When they finally cleared the southernmost arm of the mountains and turned towards the East again, the cultist stopped. "Is that it?" Before them lay the remains of the valley, down the middle of which ran a pale, cracked scar where once was a river. The bordering trees were dead or dying, twisted black shapes against the faded ground. And, there, faint grey shapes towards the horizon, was home. Dorgir nodded, and eagerly began to pick his way down the slope. The other three horses stayed motionless, their riders blankly looking over the desolate valley.

"Well? Aren't we going there?"

The cultist looked at him closely, and with a sound gentle as a soft tropical breeze replied, "No. This way." The turned and headed up the slope. Dorgir followed, often looking behind him, longing for home. They edged along the side of sheer wall when, as if out of nowhere, a barely discernable opening appeared leading into a large cave. A bundle of firewood lay at its entrance, and empty holders were spaced on the walls, each marked by a golden symbol identical to the one by the cultist's neck. Within minutes after tying the horses to a nearby stand of scraggly trees, the cave was bathed in a flicker of flame, and the cultist was seated at its center, hands resting on his knees, head bowed. Dorgir moved towards him, but felt a strong hand on his shoulder: the purple clad man shook his head and pointed to the front of the cave. Dorgir moved towards the entrance and settled on a large boulder just inside the opening. When he looked back, the cultist was swaying from side to side with his head still bowed and the two pale men had stripped off their clothes and, again naked, were walking around him in a confused spiral, two lights in eccentric orbit around a dark center.

Dorgir watched, but felt he was observing a foreign universe at an ever-increasing distance, as if the three isolated figures were receding away from him, fading behind a growing mist. Dorgir blinked, but his vision wouldn't clear: he realized the cave was growing moist, nearly wet. The two pale figures were sweating, first drops, then rivulets, and then streams of water pouring down their muscled backs, dripping onto the cave floor, flooding over their smooth bodies in what seemed to be a neverending flow. It was simultaneoulsy hypnotic and terrifying, just the constant slow movement of the two figures, and the swaying cultist at the center, never speeding up but never ceasing either. Dorgir was unaware of how much time had passed, only of the thickening air and the growth of the heavy smell of mulch in the air. It was becoming harder and harder to see clearly--at one point Dorgir could have sworn the pale figures were absorbing darkness from the ground, filling themselves with it as they moved, a dark stain spreading up the contours of their calves.

Then, it ended. The two figures collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. The cultist leaned forward on his hands, then got up slowly and walked towards Dorgir. He was breathing heavily, sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip, and his hands were dark with mud, which now covered the floor of the cave and which explained what Dorgir had seen on the legs of the two pale men. He looked at Dorgir, whose breath caught in his chest. His eyes were again entirely filled with blackness.

"It is done."

Dorgir followed the cultist outside and gasped as he looked across the valley: what before was empty and desolate was slowly darkening as a thin river of water found its way along the path of the riverbed. Dormir turned to the cultist, elated with what he saw. "You did it! You did it!" He ran to the horses, eager to untie them and get home. But as he came to the trees, instead he found the two pale men blocking his path. "Let me through--we did it!" They grabbed him, one vice-like grip on each shoulder and carried him back to the cave.

"What are you doing? We did it! I need to go, let me go!"

The fires had been put out, but the air of the cave was still thick with moisture and heavy with smoke. It was cold now, a wet chill that immediately went deep into Dormir's bones. In the shadows, he could see the cultist waiting. "What are you doing? Please ... I just want to go home."

"You are going home. But we have a debt to settle first." Dormir froze. For the first time since he was back in the temple, he heard the cultist's voice take on a steely undertone of danger and threat. "What ... what do you mean?" Dormir's voice cracked as the cultist moved closer.

"I think you know. Look at me. Look at me!" Dormir could not resist. He raised his eyes, and in the black pools of the cultist's, could glimpse his own reflection and recognize the growing fear on his own face. He could feel his will weaken as he stopped resisting the hands that carried him towards the center of the cave. There was a soft rumbling noise that hadn't been there before. The hands tightened and lifted him off the ground. He thought of struggling, wanted to struggle, but somehow couldn't summon the energy to do so. He felt he was merely an observer to what happened, that the body being lifted into the air was not his, nor was the face he saw in the still pool as they slowly submerged his head. Even the screams lost beneath the water seemed to be torn from someone else's throat, but they soon stopped.

What emerged from the cave was no longer human: elongated fingers and toes; long, sinewy muscles, and skin with a sickly green sheen to it. He was wrapped in wet cloths, tied to a horse, and led back to the city to join the others in the ranks of the Drowns, undead thralls to the servants of the Overlords.