Warfall

Part I – The Stones We Carry

Unsettled

Hiob threw up.

The world spun around him, blurring his vision. He clawed his hands into the cold soil, trying to hold on.

Another wave of sickness broke over him, contracting his core and the already empty stomach. Dry heaving, he tasted bitter bile in his mouth. It choked up his throat, inhibiting his breathing.

Drowning in my own vomit. Pathetic!

He endured the attack, then sucked in all the air he could, pounding the ground with his fist. The oxygen wasn’t enough. The next seizure depleted it, and tried to throw out his body through his throat.

“Breathe!”

The voice echoed in his head as if bouncing off the walls of his consciousness. Yet simultaneously, it became an anchor.

“Breathe, Hiob, breathe!”

With all the effort he could muster, he pushed the sickness back, taking what felt like the first true breath in his whole life. He felt strength flowing back into his center, enabling him to further battle the timeless darkness that tried to pull him under.

Hiob pressed his forehead into the sand as the pain shocked him once more, this time not in sickness but in fire. Claws of dark flames held onto his flesh, his bones, refusing to set him free.

“Come back, Hiob,” the voice echoed. Hiob felt the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and another one grabbing his hand. “Come back to us.”

Hiob ripped the darkness asunder and opened his eyes. Stabbed by light, the storm passed. Gone. The pain faded. The darkness gone. Time took hold of him again.

Exhausted but very much alive, he panted, still on his knees and arms, cold sweat dripping off his face. Every breath was salvation. Hiob sucked the air in as if never having tasted such sweet mercy before.

Finally, a peaceful stillness took possession of him. He pushed himself up with his hands and sat on his heels. 

He pressed his wrist to his forehead to help his eyes adjust to the light. The shadow of a person appeared before him. A man, he realized, as his vision cleared. A strong man clothed in heavy armor, ornamented with runes and signs. He, too, was kneeling. And in the center of a hard face framed by long black hair, two green eyes stared attentively down at Hiob like glowing emeralds.

“Welcome back, brother,” said the man, and a faint smile flashed over his countenance.

Hiob cleared his throat. “Good to see you, Aquon.” Aquon, yes. The name was there as he reached for it. This was Aquon, a Nae, father of the Quon kin. One of the first generations of beings, the first creation of the Gods, immortal – at least much more than himself, Hiob, a mere man.

Aquon seemed to have noticed the distant look on Hiob’s face. “It will all come back in time. It normally takes a few days.”

Hiob tried to remember. Normally. What had happened last time? And why had it happened? And what happened at all?

He looked down on the hard soil. The landscape behind the Nae was barren and silent. A forest arose not too far away out of the plain. A storm built in the west, hiding sun and sky. Around him was a circle of the same runes that covered Aquon’s armor. Hiob wiped his face with his fingers, clearing away the sand sticking to his forehead and wiping off the spit on his … beard? A flash of light went through him, and he jumped to his feet.

“I have a beard?” he roared at the Nae, who now also arose, albeit much slower and composed. “It’s long!” Hiob stroked through his hair. It was equally long and hung from his skull in thick, unkempt strands. He looked down and beheld his muscular body, dirty, full of sweat, and … naked?

“Aquon!” he said and pierced the Nae with his eyes. Aquon stood as still as a statue. “You told me that time didn’t pass beyond history.”

Aquon nodded. “That is correct. See, your memory is already recovering.”

Hiob didn’t share Aquon’s amusement. “I didn’t have a beard when you sent me beyond time.” He took a step toward the Nae and pointed at him with his index finger. “Tell me I didn’t age while I was gone!”

Aquon didn’t answer immediately, but took a breath and pressed Hiob’s arm down. “Much time has passed since you left. The world is dying. Magic is ceasing. Maybe you aged a bit, but you still look like you did before, a man at the zenith of his time.”

“Or maybe a few years past that,” a female voice mocked.

Hiob shot around and beheld a woman. A Nae. Her! Ilyn. 

Her hair was so blond it had the silver touch of ivory, her skin equally fair. Her tall body was clothed in a white coat. The hilts of two swords rose over her shoulders, and in her hand rested a short spear with a long and slightly curved blade. Yet it was her eyes that caught Hiob’s gaze. Almost golden, they were lit by an untamable fire. For the fraction of a moment, their eyes locked. Then she looked away, off into the distance.

Hiob tried to remember. There was an image in his past similar to this, at the edge of a forest, a city in flames against the night sky. The last time he had returned? He looked around, and only then did he see the corpses lying on the ground, sprawled around Ilyn. Maybe a dozen. Dead soldiers, men.

“We have work to do,” spoke Aquon now, drew his dagger, and pointed towards what seemed like a crack in the plain. “There is a river. Go, shave, and wash yourself.” He handed Hiob the weapon. “Find some clothes from among these dead. Then we need to talk.”

#

The dream ripped Aven awake. For a long moment, she felt disoriented – and that never happened to her. The last weeks had been draining, but this dizziness was different. She sat up and felt sweat run down her naked body.

The room lay in darkness. Faint light faded in through the large window, which touched the floor. Dawn was upon her, but the sun was still far.

She threw her legs over the side of the bed and covered herself with a white sheet. Touching the stone floor with her bare feet felt like walking on a frozen lake, but the cold helped to clear her head.

She arose and walked over to the window, every step conscious and deliberate. She could see the city from up here, halfway covered in the autumn’s fog, trying to fight against the slumber that winter was imposing. The city of Ilunath, her home, was built around the western bay of a mountain lake like a crescent moon. The first cold nights of the season had already frozen the lake’s edges with a rim of ice.

Aven ran her fingers through her long black hair – the only extravagant beauty she allowed herself as a warrioress.

Her blue eyes wandered beyond the lake upwards along the vertical cliffs of the mountainside. She contemplated the sky towering over the snow-covered peaks. The approaching sun outshone the stars one by one. Then she tasted the bile on her tongue again and was pulled back into her dream. 

Two Nae, one male, one female. And the hands of the person through whose eyes she had watched. 

The faces of the Nae were concealed by the blurriness of the dream’s nature, their race only tangible through the dream’s emotions. The male Nae had approached like a storm, marching with the brute force of an earthquake. The woman seemed to be his opposite; light-footed, clothed in white, armed with two swords and a spear, her hair like waves of silver.

Each of them carried a distinct feeling to Aven. The man emitted chaos and the taste of blood, but it was the woman who had made Aven sweat with despair. As she recalled the image of her, a feeling of deep terror clawed its way into her heart. As if the sun would forever set while darkness consumed everyone she loved and her soul along with it.

Another shiver ran down her spine. It was only due to Aven’s utter self-control that she didn’t shake. No matter what feelings these three figures emitted and what it might mean, Aven was sure of one thing: They were all coming her way. 

A knock on the door yanked her out of her pondering. Without shifting her eyes from the fading stars, she answered, “Come in, Nivee.”

The door swung open without a sound, and a young Nae entered. Aven didn’t have to look at her to know her sister’s every angle. Blond hair, bright eyes, warm and graceful.

“The way I knocked?” asked Nivee with a voice as soft but also as pungent as smoke. It was unlike her own, a rasp, darker tone, supreme on the battlefield.

Aven turned her head and beheld her sister. A faint smile was her answer.

Nivee reciprocated the gesture and closed the door behind her. “Good morning, Aven.”

“You are up early,” noted Aven.

“Straight to the core.” Nivee shook her head but didn’t seem offended. She looked around the spartanly furnished room. “Just like the cold in here. I am surprised I can’t see my breath.”

Only then did Aven look over to the fireplace. The flames had died overnight, and so had all the room’s warmth. “I apologize.”

Nivee smiled – a smile that seemed to heat the room instantly. “Don’t. You should be sleeping on warm pillows and rest from your great victory.” She walked closer and stood at the other edge of the window, just beyond Aven’s reach. “Yet, you are awake before the sun, brooding … over?”

“Just a bad dream,” said Aven and walked towards the fire to rekindle it.

“It seems to have unsettled you, dear,” said Nivee and turned.

Aven was glad Nivee wasn’t able to see her face. “I have fought much worse than nightmares.” But the truth was, this vision had, in many instances, felt more real than the chaos of the recent battles.

Nivee allowed the subject to rest while Aven rekindled the fire. Slowly, as the flames rose, the cold fled. 

“How is father?” asked Aven to kill the silence. She dropped the sheet that had covered her and marched to the water basin. Time to wash this dream off.

She couldn’t help but notice Nivee’s eyes widening as she saw her sister’s strides. “Is there any part of your body that is not muscle?” Nivee asked.

Aven looked into the calm water, asking herself the same question as she stared at her reflection. It was the face she had seen for centuries. Dark hair, straight nose, cold eyes, defined cheekbones and jaw. Is there any part of me that is not a warrior?

“I mean, wow, look at you!” said Nivee. “I can see every muscle in your legs, your arms, your back. Thin but defined. It’s almost as if the edge where you end and everything else begins is the gate to another world. Sharp as steel and drawn with a scalpel.”

Aven tried to see into her own soul. She wouldn’t have chosen these words to describe her own body. Too long, too small, too … unfeminine? These came to mind. At least in the world that Nivee inhabited. But Aven truly was a child of a different breed. Her body had been trained for one single purpose: combat, victory.

Aven looked at her sister. A different world indeed. 

She shook her head, and, with both hands, broke through the water’s surface to splash the cold liquid over her face. “Are you thinking about drawing me?”

Nivee looked confused, then smiled. “Oh, well, no. I mean, I could …”

“Don’t.” Aven poured more water over her hair and chest. “I mean, I love what you draw, but seeing myself in one of your paintings …”

Nivee smiled. A perfect daughter. Aven sighed inside. What did that make herself? The perfect weapon?

“Come,” said Aven and pointed to the bed, since there was no chair in the room. “Sit. Tell me why you came.”

Nivee followed the invitation without taking her eyes off her sister. Aven grabbed a towel and started to dry her hair.

“A first scout has returned,” said Nivee.

Aven froze in the midst of her movement and stared at her sister. There wasn’t any sign of a lie or a trace of humor on her face. “Who?” 

“Inro.”

“When?”

“Just before morning.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You are right now.”

“But if you already know …”

“Don’t worry, sister. He came straight to father. His tidings seem to be rather pressing.”

Aven straightened herself. “He came alone?”

Nivee nodded. “We don’t know why yet.”

“He hasn’t spoken?”

“He has. With father. There is a hearing appointed at sunrise.”

“The whole council will attend?”

“As far as I am informed.” Nivee arose and took Aven’s hands in hers. “Sister, I was with father when the scout returned. I asked for the right to call you. Truthfully, I missed you. The war has kept you away. Don’t be afraid. We are free now. You freed us. The world has changed. Not all our plans will turn out perfectly, but you have opened the door to a whole world of new horizons.”

“But he is back – already! He was only gone for … what … three weeks? Four at the most? And why is he alone?”

“Aven,” hushed Nivee, and hugged Aven. “We will hear his tale. Don’t despair. We have come so far, we won’t fail now.”

Aven nodded, but her vision blurred, and again she saw through eyes that weren’t her own. They are coming. She freed herself of Nivee’s hug and walked over to the window again. The panorama of the mountains soothed her, but didn’t bring answers to the questions that the vision raised.

Nivee seemed to sense Aven’s agony and followed her. “Aven,” she whispered and placed her hand at the side of her sister’s head, caressing the half-moon tattooed under the left eye with her thumb. “What did you see?”

# 

Hiob found the Nae’s dagger sharp enough to shave his face clean. Since he didn’t have a mirror, he just shaved his head completely as well.  The water was ice-cold, yet he was grateful to be clean. The slaughtered soldiers provided him with a shirt, trousers, a woolen vest, and some heavy boots. A Nae lay among the dead also, but female, so he couldn’t really loot from her, even though her clothes were much better made. After a glance over her gear, he took a dark red scarf and then left her to her eternal sleep.

Night was falling, and light rain had set in when Aquon approached. Hiob was still searching for a fitting coat and freed a corpse from his. It seemed as if it had been dark blue or brown once, but age and weather had drained it to a faint grey.

“Here,” said Hiob and handed the dagger back to Aquon.

The Nae took the weapon with a simple nod and watched as Hiob tried the coat on. “A bit tight?”

Hiob swung his arms back and forth. “It will do for now, as long as we aren’t planning on a battle in the morning.” He paused and shot an interrogating stare at Aquon. “Are we?”

Aquon didn’t answer but walked right past him, before coming to a halt in front of the dead Nae. Hiob followed him and considered the fallen woman. Her hair was bright, but dirty with earth and blood. Two arrows, shafts already broken, protruded from her body. One had gotten her thigh, the other had hit closer to home and penetrated her abdomen.

“Did Ilyn kill her?”

Aquon shook his head. “We found her like that.”

“She was attacked by these men.”

Aquon grumbled affirmatively. 

“She fought a good fight,” said Hiob, hunkering down. “She kept fighting even with two arrows in her body and still got the archer.” He pointed at the human who still held a bow in his hand, though the hand was no longer attached to his arm.

“She didn’t fight alone,” said Aquon.

Hiob rose and considered the whole scene anew. It seemed plausible. He turned to Aquon. “Whoever accompanied her just … left her to rot on the ground?”

“It was another Nae. We scared him away.”

“You saw the fight?”

Aquon pressed his jaws together. “We heard fighting and ran down the forest to this plane. The Nae was kneeling beside her. But when he saw us, he fled.”

“You didn’t pursue him?”

“It wasn’t our fight. We came to help, saw that it was over, and … well, the survivor wanted to be left alone.”

That still didn’t answer Hiob’s question as to why Aquon had brought him back into time. An insignificant skirmish hardly seemed urgent enough.

“Last time, you called me because Udaar had been conquered, ransacked, and burned,” he recalled. “Is that correct?”

Aquon looked off into the distance. “It wasn’t the last time, but yes.”

Hiob sighed and knelt on one knee, studying the dead Nae again. “You know her,” he realized. 

Aquon squatted down beside him. “I do. From a long time ago.”

“Not likely an old flame?”

Aquon didn’t seem amused. “Not likely.” He reached for her head and turned it around, so Hiob could see her whole face. Blood crusted over the whole right side, but the left side was cleaner. “See that?”

Hiob did. A crescent moon, facing down, was tattooed on her cheek under the left eye. “A token?” asked Hiob.

“A brand,” said Aquon. “I put it there.” He let the Nae’s head drop back into the dirt as if he had touched a rotten fruit.

Hiob still didn’t understand.

“She shouldn’t be here,” said Aquon, rose, and walked towards Ilyn, who stood like a statue of marble a stone’s throw away, staring into the darkness beyond. 

#

Aven stepped out into the long courtyard of the military academy. As she looked up, she saw the stars in the east disappear as the sun drove its light higher. She inhaled the cold morning air. As she exhaled, small clouds of frozen breath drifted away. 

The academy, a long rectangle of buildings surrounding a central training court, was still asleep. She saw two soldiers gathered at a far corner for an early morning drill. Besides that, Aven found herself alone in the silence of the morning. 

“Commander Aven!”

Not so alone after all, she thought, and turned to the source of the voice. Another Nae soldier approached her from the side. His tall frame was crowned by his unruly brown hair that only a helmet could tame. A soft smile twitched at the edges of her mouth. 

“Good morning, Cithan,” she said as the man stopped in front of her. 

“You are up early,” he noted. 

As are you, she thought, but said, “I am glad your wound healed quickly.” 

He smiled and lifted his shoulder to show its returned range of movement. “So am I. Who knows what battles lie ahead? I might have to shield you from another arrow.” 

She pressed her lips together at the memory. “Let’s hope there won’t be too many arrows directed at us in the near future.”

He nodded while Aven tried to end the conversation. Sunrise was upon them. “I am heading to the palace. If you’d excuse me?” 

Cithan’s eyes widened for a moment. “So the rumors are true. A scout has returned.” 

“The rumors spread faster than wildfires. But yes. I am heading to the council to hear his report.” 

“May I walk you there?” Cithan asked. 

Aven considered the invitation, then shook her head. “Thank you for the offer. Maybe another time. I need some time to think.”

“Maybe I could help with that, too,” he suggested.

His persistence was a bit irritating, but not unwelcome. “Surely I will need someone to mull things over with after the scout’s report.” 

He bowed his head. “I’ll be more than happy to lend an ear. And once all this is over, we might one day enjoy enough peace to converse about …” He hesitated, shrugged, “… more pleasant things than war.” 

About us? She placed a hand on his chest. “Yes. If the stars are with us.”  

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to turn away and leave Cithan behind. She had no time for romantic entanglements. Not yet. She couldn’t allow herself to get distracted. To clear her mind, she focused on the scent of the cold air, the taste of snow on the mountain tops, and the whispers of the wind which always arose during the morning hours.

Finally, she reached the lakeshore. The sound of small waves accompanied her as she walked along the small path. It meandered through the trees until it gave way to a large space. Behind the square, the great hall of the council arose – it was one of the few buildings that emanated beauty. So much else had to be sacrificed for the practicality of survival. Huge gates made from wood and glass marked the entrance. Soon the sun would pour in and bathe the hall in liquid gold. But it was still too early in the morning, and silence reigned, which was both sweet and depressing.

Two guards saw her crossing the square. One of them opened a side wing of the gate, bowed, and let her enter. “Commander Aven.”

The hall swallowed her in deep shadows and blocked out the sound of the small waves from the water. Somehow, the grey darkness was soothing, not demanding decisions from her, allowing her just to be and breathe.

“Aven, daughter,” she heard her father say. Aven beheld the dark figure of Cevon standing at the grand table in the center of the hall. Maps and documents lay all over it, but he wasn’t paying attention to them. He was focused on her, his daughter, clothed in wide dark trousers, boots, and a simple shirt under a tight jacket. The latter was reinforced with pieces of leather – a symbolic robe for the leader of the army.

She walked up towards the table and bowed. “Father,” she said, aware of the intimate setting that did not require her to address him by his proper political title. Father was, as he always said, his favorite title in the world.

When she looked up, he smiled. “Thank you for coming.” When he called, the Nae obeyed. But by thanking her, he let her feel the deep appreciation he had for her. It showed how she still had the agency to refuse his orders. It spoke of his joy and gratitude for her obedience.

“The return of the first spy. It’s what we all have been waiting for,” she said, but with a lack of conviction. 

“You haven’t, am I right?”

She looked down, ashamed. Her father had a way of looking straight into one’s soul. “Father … I have … It’s just … forgive m…”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, rounded the table, and stepped in front of her. He lifted her chin and forced her to look at him. The high build. The blond hair. The gentle eyes, filled with power as well as compassion. Today, however, she noticed something else in them. Maybe her perception was askew because of the dream, but it felt like he was looking past her into a world only he could see. Then again, who could blame him for being distracted? She certainly wasn’t as present as she should be. “You have gifted us the victory we have hoped and prayed for.”

She shook her head. “It was the effort of us all.”

“But this is not what weighs down your soul, is it?”

Aven sighed. How do you manage to see so far into the deep? “I feel … unprepared”, she confessed. “This place, this home. It’s all …”

“… you have ever known.”

She nodded. “It’s my life.”

“As it has been for most people here on the mountain.”

Instinctively, her fingertips wandered to the mark under her eye. The evidence of freedom once enjoyed. Freedom lived but unremembered, never learned.

“It is our home,” she said.

Cevon nodded. “And that’s why we are still here. Have we packed our supplies? No. Have we made plans to leave? No. Have we decided to abandon Ilunath? The Mountain?”

He shook his head and touched the outside of her shoulders with his firm and gentle hands. “This mountain is who we were made to be. But we are no longer an island. The spies will give us important information that will help us remain safe. The world is a vast place, most of it hostile for one reason or another. Whatever comes, we’ll weather it because we will see it ahead of time.”

He looked at her with inquisitive eyes until she nodded. “It’s just …,” she said, paused, but then continued with determination, “all my life I have worked towards the goal to free us. I have learned and trained and practiced. I have found my limits and broken them. Over and over again. And we made it.” I made it. “We are free now. But now that I am free, I don’t know what this means. I have never learned not to struggle.”

Cevon smiled. “The struggle never ends. It just changes its nature. We are far from safe yet. But let me make you a promise. We will learn freedom – together.”

For the first time this morning, Aven’s smile came from within her heart.

“My King,” came the voice of a guard, “Inro is ready, and all the council members have arrived.”

Cevon nodded but kept looking at his daughter. “Ready?”

Aven looked at him before her eyes flickered up to the hall’s curved ceiling, where east-facing windows let in shafts of morning light. She nodded.

“Have them come in,” said Cevon.

#

“… the further north we ventured, the worse the war became.”

While Inro gave his report, Aven sat on one of the elaborate chairs of the council and watched the other six members, trying to gauge their reactions.

“The humans in this area seem to follow no flag or king,” continued Inro. “The whole land is laden with violence. Linae and I decided to avoid the roads by day to evade the bands of robbers and murderers. The cities we found were an equal image of anarchy. Only the fjord land kingdom in the south is holding up a defense, but its resources are dwindling. We saw more than a few battles they lost, their cities ransacked, their women raped, their children sacrificed to strange idols.”

Aven looked at Inro. She had gotten to know him as a reliable spy, able to navigate every terrain. Even now, after his incredible journey and lack of sleep, he stood upright, both feet planted firmly on the ornamented tile floor. Yet she saw the exhaustion in his eyes, and above all, the grief. But without fear or hesitation, he gave his account.

“We saw a large mountain range rise before us in the north. Fall was giving way to winter ever more rapidly as we continued north, but we kept to the coast, hoping to pass the mountains by on the frozen ocean, but … we never made it that far.”

Inro took a deep breath. “We were ambushed. They must have picked up our tracks and waited until the darkest morning hours. Linae was standing guard, so I don’t know exactly how it all started, but I woke to her scream and found her with an arrow shot through her center.”

His voice had become quieter and more monotone as he continued, trying to keep his emotions at bay. Yet still, his eyes glazed over as memory took him back to that fateful morning. “More than twenty men attacked us from all sides. With our backs to the boulder we had camped under, we were surrounded immediately. Linae fought fiercely, and we killed a few, but I knew we had to get away so I could tend to her wound. We broke through the circle and made it out of the forest, over a plain, and through a river. The river helped us to get more distance between us and them because it was partly frozen. We managed to cross on top of the ice, which I broke behind me.”

The Nae swallowed. “As we reached the other riverbank, another arrow pierced her leg. I dragged her out of view of the enemy, but she was losing too much blood. I laid her down and tried to stop the bleeding, but the remaining men crossed the river too fast. Once again, they were upon us, and Linae joined me in the fight. We … won. We killed them all.” Inro’s voice broke, and his words faded to a whisper. “But it was too late for Linae. She died in my arms.”

Aven felt as though she awoke in the long pause that followed. The silence in the hall was so complete that her own breath seemed to desecrate the moment.

Inro swallowed down the lump of grief and continued. “But this is not why I came back at such haste. The night had given way to dawn as we fought, but the sun didn’t shine through the clouds on this dark, grey day. Once Linae was gone, silence fell. Even the river seemed mute. And then I looked up, disturbed by … a sound … or a feeling.”

Inro now looked up, staring at his king. Aven saw his grief swept away by a memory that brought a terror of another kind to his core. And she recognized it as the same terror that had woken her this morning.

“Your brother stood at the edge of the clearing.”

Aven felt how the council members sucked in their breath. One of them, Ileoda, started coughing. Inro hadn’t even uttered his name, yet the impact of just the thought of this man had the power to cloud the day in darkness.

“Are you certain?” asked Caráno, another council member. “Could it have been a … delusion of your mind, caused by the shock and grief of the loss of your companion?”

Inro bowed his head. “I am certain. It was Aquon. I saw his stature, the axes hanging in a bag over his shoulder. He was accompanied by another Nae, younger, a woman clothed in white. I don’t think I know her. I froze for just an instant at the sight of him, but then I arose and fled. He didn’t pursue me immediately, by which I judge that they didn’t see my mark under the dirt, sweat, and blood of the battle.”

“He saw Linae’s corpse then and …” pondered Ileoda, who had gotten a hold of her cough, “… recognized her for who she was?”

Inro looked at Cevon once more. “I seek your forgiveness, my King, if I misjudged the situation. It was my first instinct to flee. Once I had disappeared into the woods, I halted once more to be sure that I wasn’t fleeing the fears of my own mind. I turned around and watched from a hidden position how the two Nae walked towards the dead and assessed our fight. The warrior followed our tracks to the river while the warrioress knelt beside Linae. She searched her wounds and studied her blade before resting her gaze on Linae’s face. Linae’s head had suffered a hit, and blood and dirt crusted her features. But the woman wiped her face clean and … I am sure she saw the mark because she called on him. He froze when he saw it, too. He then searched the clearing for any signs of me. I didn’t dare to breathe. The rushing of the river concealed the sound of my retreat, but I didn’t risk staying any longer. The moment to take Linae’s corpse with me had passed. I didn’t dare to attack two enemies by myself, so I came to you as fast as I could.”

His head bowed, he concluded, “Forgive my weakness, my King.”

#

Hiob remained with the dead Nae for a few moments longer while darkness fell over the scene; then he stood up. He tried to remember his past, but his head was a complete mess. There were fragments of different times and places, pieces that wouldn’t fit together.

“How long was I … gone?” he asked Aquon when he joined them.

But it was Ilyn who answered without looking at him. “One hundred and sixty-three years.”

Hiob nodded. “Long time.”

“For a human,” said Ilyn, still staring into the distance.

Hiob nodded. “Everyone who knew me is dead once again.”

“Lucky you,” she snapped.

Hiob looked up at Ilyn. “Someone’s had a bad day!”

A step too far. Ilyn’s eyes flashed with a heat hotter than fire. 

“The problems of the humans seem to go away with time,” said Aquon to diffuse the situation, “at least when they die. The problems of us Nae …” – he finally looked at Hiob – “… never.”

“Problems like the dead Nae down by the river?”

Aquon nodded. “I imprisoned that Nae.”

“So she escaped?”

“No. Well … her prison … Hiob, I imprisoned her, the other Nae who was with her when she died, and all of their family and kin.”

“How long ago?”

“Before you were even born. Long before that. The Second Dawn came to a close in this conflict.”

“She was imprisoned for … hundreds and hundreds of years?”

“Millennia almost.” Aquon looked back into the darkness. “And she should still be.”

“We chase the other Nae down?”

Aquon raised his eyebrows half in agreement. “Feeling strong enough?”

Hiob took a deep breath. His mind felt fuzzy, but at least his body seemed solid.

Aquon nodded. “We need to find horses. The way is long, but we shouldn’t be on the road for more than a couple of weeks.” The last light of day illuminated Aquon’s teeth as he grinned. “I know where he is going.”

#

Cevon rose and walked up to Inro. “You have acted well, Inro.” Softly, he stroked his fingertips over the mark under Inro’s eye.

Fade was the word echoing in Aven’s mind.

The king turned to the council. “We can assume that our liberation is no longer secret from my brother. It is fitting that he, of all people, is the first to discover that his bane no longer rests upon us.”

Aven saw a small smile cross his lips as he spoke. For too long, this reunion had lain in wait. For too long, the conflict had festered in his heart. Finally, the day of confrontation dawned. For better or for worse. But even worse was better than stasis, she thought, and hoped that time would prove her right.

Cevon faced Inro again, who now seemed even more drained than before. If weeks of scouting and a sleepless flight hadn’t exhausted him enough, relating the account of Linae’s death had.

“How long did it take you to get here after Linae’s demise?” Cevon asked the spy.

“I didn’t rest nor dare close my eyes. The days blurred together as the land swept past me. But I’d say about a week.”

Cevon nodded. “You are hereby dismissed, Inro.” He turned to one of the guards. “Please, make sure he is taken good care of, given food and clean clothing. Rest, Inro. More battles will follow.”

Aven watched the Nae leave the hall, growing more tired with every step. She thought of the others she had sent out; dozens who were still roaming the world in the directions of the four winds. The world may have changed, but it is still your enemy. She repeated to herself these words of caution she had given to the chosen ones.

“It has been three weeks since the spies left,” the king addressed the council. “They will not turn around for at least another week.” Cevon’s eyes grew dark. “He will arrive here earlier.”

“How can we know that he comes here straight away?” Ileoda asked. “He might as well send the female Nae to spy on us while unearthing an army to defy us.”

“We cannot know for certain,” admitted Cevon, facing his council. “It is probable that he comes because he doesn’t know the scope of the situation yet.”

“They are coming,” said Aven and drew all eyes to her. She didn’t grant them a look but stared at her father until he understood. 

He nodded. “You saw them.” It wasn’t a question.

Aven arose. “Aquon is coming.” The mention of his name dropped the temperature of the room to freezing, but she didn’t care. She had stared her enemy in the face. She had defeated the last; she would defeat him. Finally, her aim had a face again. “And he is not coming alone. This other Nae and a third person are accompanying him.”

“A third?” asked Caráno.

“By the feel of him, he is human.” 

“Human?” Caráno snorted. 

“He won’t be a hindrance,” said the king. “The only question remaining is how we will receive them …?”

#

Aquon crouched down, reached over his shoulder, and pulled a weapon pack onto his thigh. Hiob saw the two shafts of Aquon’s battle axes sticking out.

Inside the bag, Aquon grabbed a wrapped, arm-long utensil and handed it to Hiob. “Maybe it helps you remember.”

Hiob felt the weight and immediately knew it was his sword. As long as his outstretched arm, forged by Aquon himself. He unwrapped it and let his fingers slide onto the cool leather of the handle. For a moment, he gave in to the urge to draw it, but stayed his hand with the blade halfway drawn.

“Are we going to war?”

Aquon looked up. “I hope not, but the odds aren’t in favor of peace.”

“Are they ever?” asked Ilyn. When Hiob looked up at her, he thought a glimpse of a smile passed her face.

He let the blade glide back into its sheath. “I crave a good fight, but … let’s see how far we need to take this.” Whatever this is.

Ilyn nodded and led the way south, but Aquon grabbed Hiob and held him back for a second. “Hiob,” he said, watching him out of his cold green eyes. “Watch out for Ilyn. She didn’t want me to bring you back.”

“I will try my best. Is it …?” He sighed. ”I don’t remember … yet.”

“I know. Let me put it this way. The last time you came to me to leave mortality, you were in sort of a hurry. And after that, I didn’t see my daughter for two decades.”

Hiob stared at Ilyn, who had almost reached the edge of the forest. He pressed his lips together. 

“Come,” Aquon said. 

For a second, Hiob looked back at the dead Nae. A shiver ran over his back. Then he nodded and followed his two friends into the night. 

Chained

Aven watched the Council slowly disperse into the new day. Some were talking to each other, whispering, while others left in a hurry to execute their king’s designs.

She didn’t move an inch in her chair, waited. Cevon spoke briefly with Caráno, who still didn’t seem satisfied with his king’s decision. Aven couldn’t quite make out what Caráno’s concern was, but she had heard enough from him already. His intentions were always written directly on the tip of his tongue. One of the crucial things she learned in the centuries of being a warrior was that a way around a wall was almost always preferable to the brute way through it. 

Eventually, Caráno also left the hall, and silence fell again. By now, the sweet twilight from the early morning hours had vanished. Instead, bolts of golden light broke through the windows in the ceiling, bathing the room in stark contrasts of light and shadow.

“What will you do …?” asked Aven, cutting the silence asunder.

Cevon turned and stopped in his tracks when he saw his daughter still sitting there. He smiled, but it was unconvincing and uneasy. Aven knew he could withstand the disagreement of the councilmembers, but not hers.

“What will you do,” she asked again and arose, “when he comes?”

He walked towards his throne made of ornamented vines, leaves, and flowers, avoiding her gaze.

“… when he stands before you?”

Cevon stared at the throne as if the lifeless seat could give him an answer. “I have thought of this moment so often … for centuries I have waited for it.”

Aven stepped closer, watching her father from the side as he struggled for words.

“I saw myself torturing him, for eternity,” he continued, “I saw myself do even worse things just to hurt him. On better days, I simply desired his death.”

Aven waited, but Cevon seemed to have fallen into the depths of a world of his own, a world created by the imprisoned mind for its captor.

“Do you think that it should be your decision alone?” she asked.

Cevon seemed to surface back into the real world, blinked, and then contemplated her question. “I guess not, but also, yes. He imprisoned us all, but it was because he wanted to get to me. He is my brother after all.”

“I trained for centuries to be your weapon, father,” said Aven, coming closer until she almost touched him. “I have given you freedom. I have provided a way to a different future for all of us. We might have to learn what freedom means, we might have to struggle to find our place in whatever the world is now, but it is a path we must take.”

She paused and leaned even closer. “What do you think would happen if you kept him as a prisoner, a subject for your fantasies of torture?”

Not immediately understanding the core of her question, Cevon turned his head towards his daughter.

“He could flee eventually, I assume,” he said, but Aven shook her head.

“You’d stay his prisoner. He’d be a constant reminder of what this place stands for, of your imprisonment, of your dependency on his mercy. You’d never be free.”

Cevon’s eyes narrowed. “You know what you have to do, Aven. Get him here. Bring him to me, and I will take care of the rest.”

Aven didn’t let him off the hook. “I will, father, you know I will. However, this conflict is not between you and him alone. If you decide to let him live, you force us all to linger in the past.”

“What do you want me to do, Aven?” he asked, turning towards her fully, his voice rising. “Do you really think that death is a sufficient punishment for all the lifetimes we have spent up here? Do you assume the people will be satisfied?”

“No, they won’t be,” she said, standing her ground, “but they will be free. If you give them the object of their imprisonment, you keep them in hatred, anchored forever in the past, unable to set sails to find a future, a new life.”

“I won’t just kill him. There were too many years of silence. The people … I need some form of closure, some form of vengeance.”

Aven nodded. “Father, all I ask of you is this: Allow me to kill him when the time comes. I don’t care what you need to do once I’ve brought him to you; just don’t shackle me and your people to the past. We have been captives on this mountain for too long. I haven’t even set foot beyond the river yet! All I am asking is to let us go. Allow yourself to move on. Allow me to end this and then find freedom.”

Cevon bowed his head, humbled by Aven’s openness. Her stern but loving words did not seem to have fallen on deaf ears. When he looked up, his guard was down. He lifted his hands to frame her face gently within his fingers. “Aven, I promise to end this. And when the moment comes, you can be my weapon, as always.” He kissed her on the forehead and let go of her.

She smiled even though it was void of real joy. “Thank you, father.” She turned and walked the way she had come, towards the doors, towards the lake.

But before she reached them, she turned around once again, finding her father still standing there in deep contemplation. “And Father …,” she said, waiting until she had his attention, “you are not considering to forgive him, are you?”

He hesitated, weighing the option in his mind. “No, Aven. I am not.”

She nodded. “Good,” she said and walked out into the golden morning.

#

Hiob halted his horse in the wheat field when he heard the vultures. He looked up and saw them circling beyond a ridge that yet impeded his view of their prey. 

A wave of nausea washed over him, and he had to hold on tight to the reins to stay in the saddle. For almost two nights and two days, they had chased across the countryside, over hills and across streams, always south and away from a huge mountain range that, so late in summer, still had lots of ice and snow clinging to its peaks.

The pace of the two Nae had been brutal. The area was so abandoned that they found only deserted farmsteads. Aquon’s theory was that a war was driving the farmers to the bigger cities for protection. Yet Hiob had not even seen signs of an invading force. The fields looked unyielding, and the whole country seemed sick, as if a curse was eating it away. 

When they were finally able to steal some horses, Hiob slept for the first time since Aquon called him back. His dreams were nightmares of fire, blood, and war. No clarity came to him. Whenever he looked at Ilyn, silent and distant, he felt as if he had forgotten something vital. But try as he might, his memories escaped him. 

After two more days, they picked up the spoor of their prey again. The Nae had also found a mount, and his tracks led south as fast and as straight as an arrow’s flight.

Aquon and Ilyn had ridden on undeterred. Hiob remained for another moment and took in the stillness of these fields, illuminated by the late afternoon’s sun. Its golden rays saturated the colors of fall, giving the surrounding forests and distant mountains a bounty of color and life. 

A sudden ring of bells driven by the wind interrupted his musings. He chased his horse up the hill to the crest where Aquon and Ilyn waited. What they beheld was – war. 

A small city stood at the seashore of a broad fjord – a city being sacked. Through a burst gate, an army was pouring in.

The stillness Hiob had experienced just moments ago was ripped away by a myriad of sounds. The breathless song of bells, the roars of men, the screams of women and children, the whirring of arrows. Hiob smelt the early stench of blood and smoke. 

“We’ll have to get through that city before they take the port,” Ilyn assessed. “If we don’t manage to cross over to the other shore, we have to detour around the fjord.” 

Aquon’s eyes narrowed. “The Nae has surely passed here before the battle began. We don’t have time for a detour. Let’s find a boat.” With the matter decided, Aquon and Ilyn started down the hill.

Hiob didn’t move. “Who are they?”

Aquon halted again and shrugged. “What does it matter?”

Hiob watched as a side gate opened to release common citizens. Women and children, the elderly. They flooded out like a river breaking through a dam. The enemy cavalry outside the gates spotted them and spurred their horses. The people’s fate was sealed. 

“You don’t know anything about this ambush?” Hiob asked.

Aquon seemed indifferent. “A war here, a war there … they have all become the same to me. Especially with man. The cycles repeat themselves. It happens so fast, I lose track. War seems to find us.”

Hiob looked at Ilyn, a lone, white rider chasing towards a mealstrom. “Come now!” Aquon urged and spurred his horse. 

They didn’t catch up with Ilyn until they reached a cluster of ruins. The Nae had unmounted and hid behind a small stone wall within sprinting distance of the gate. Aquon and Hiob also chased their horses away and took cover next to her. 

She smiled at them. “Ready for this?”

Aquon shrugged and ripped his axes out of the bag. 

Ilyn rose and started walking towards the gate.

“Why does it seem,” Hiob said and held Aquon back, “that she’d rather face an army than talk to me?” 

The Nae’s eyes narrowed, “You can’t remember, or you don’t want to?”

“Aquon, I need to know. I really don’t know what I did to her. I cannot remember, even though I want to.” Hiob clenched his teeth. “I feel like I … there is this great hole in my chest, this darkness pulling on me, but … where does it originate? There’s …”

Aquon turned fully towards Hiob now. With the axes in hands, he looked like a bull ready to attack. “Ilyn has been unstable since her childhood. I taught her to control it, to master her mind and spirit. Fighting is one way I taught her to channel her energies. That’s why she loves the battle. She was doing better than ever. But then you came around and threw her over the edge again!” His last words rolled as dark as thunder. Then Aquon charged toward the city.

Hiob felt the distant pain again, almost like guilt, but disconnected from memory. He clasped the handle of his sword. The gesture grounded him in what he hoped was real, was him, was genuine. The feeling was a reminder of who he was, of what he was capable of, and of the times he had been called back before.

Back then, it had also taken time to remember, to fully return and become present once again – present in a different time, a new era, another life almost. He always had a weapon – a constant thread since the day he killed his sister’s murderer with a rock. 

“Sow death, and you stay alive,” he whispered.

Are these mine or Aquon’s words? Did he teach them to me, or … to you, Ilyn? Is this why you seek the battle?

Hiob pushed the scattered memories away and hastened toward the city. Running cleared his head better than walking. His feet flew over the ground, finding firm footing. The wind blew over his face, cooling him. Back in the moment, the present took him in, freed him from the weight of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

Aquon had already entered through the city gates, which by now had swallowed the entire attacking army. Unarmed people tried to get out of the city, fleeing the way the enemy had come. 

He fought against the flood of refugees to reach the Nae. But then a horde of riders broke over the villagers from the side.

Hiob cursed and pushed forward between the tearing of swords through flesh and the terrified screams of people being trodden under hooves. He reached the gate and the scene transitioned from slaughter to devastation. 

The city itself was the hell Hiob remembered all too well from times past. The pillaging of cities had always been pure chaos. And nothing had changed during his time beyond time. 

Houses in flames, smoke in the air, blood on the ground. Men and women running to and fro, bands of warriors rounding up pockets of enemy soldiers, attacking whoever crossed their path. Some common villagers tried to withstand the attackers with hammers and axes, bricks and bare hands. Their superior numbers didn’t prove an advantage. Soon, almost everybody was lying on the ground, wounded, beaten, or dead. Those who still had the strength to crawl were finished off a moment later.

Hiob stumbled through streets and alleys and finally found Aquon in the central market square. Strangely enough, nobody attacked the Nae – a bastion of calm amidst a roaring storm. “Have you found her?” asked Hiob. 

Aquon shook his head. “She must be here somewhere.”

“Let’s get to the port,” urged Hiob. It wouldn’t be long before they would become the target of some sword. 

Aquon grunted and headed for the alleys, Hiob at his heels. The further they came, the closer and more obvious the actual brutality of the carnage became. Corpses lay on the ground where they had been felled. People ran in all directions, wounded, dying, fleeing, attacking.

A woman stumbled out of a house in front of them and fell into the mud of the street. Her dress was torn and her wrists bruised. A soldier followed her outside, clearly not a member of the city guard. He grabbed the woman by the hair and began to drag her back inside.

An old urge took hold of Hiob’s hand, which shot to his sword. But it was met equally fast by Aquon, pushing the blade back down, holding it in its scabbard. “I haven’t brought you back for her.”

Hiob wanted to protest, but at this moment a battalion of some twenty men came running up the street – soldiers out for death.

Aquon pushed Hiob down a small alley. They kept running, and the closer they got towards the shore, the thicker the fighting grew until they found the heart of the battle. The port was the most chaotic mess of a fight Hiob had ever seen. The city’s army had tried to make a stand here, but by now, nobody seemed to belong to any flag anymore. The line of defense had broken, and everyone was fighting for dear life now.

And there, on a pile of dead bodies in the center, stood a single figure clothed in white. The sun’s glare seemed to focus on her. Hiob stopped in his tracks as he spotted her. For the last two days, she had been indifferent, cold, closed. But this version of Ilyn was nothing like that. It was concentrated, focused, lethal.

She didn’t fight to win; she fought to fight. Her blades flung fast, her stabs were precise. Every move was perfect, every execution skill and art. She was the third army amidst the chaos – the only one organized, superior, prevailing.

“Stop her!” Aquon ripped Hiob out of his trance of awe. “We aren’t here for fun!” He pointed to a few ship masts sticking out behind and above the turmoil. “I’ll get us a boat, and you get Ilyn!” The Nae didn’t even bother to lift his axes as he moved into the brawl. His momentum cut a breach through the crowd like an avalanche cuts down a forest. His armor absorbed whatever hit rained down on him. He didn’t even seem to notice them.

Hiob quickly lost sight of him in the havoc and refocused his attention on the white woman, rising over the battle’s tide as the bodies piled under her feet.

Suddenly, the air rang with the sound of an ancient blade – and its handle rested in Hiob’s hand. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. A flood washed over him as if a dam had broken. Every muscle seemed to remember; every move was present now. The path to Ilyn revealed itself to him through the language of the sword. His head cleared, but not as before. It was a heavy clarity, one savored with the weight of murder, of killing, of the fight for survival, of necessity, but also of a dark joy.

Hiob bowed his head as his neck muscles tightened. 

This was the day to return. 

I am here. 

He took a deep breath. 

I am now.

He exhaled and with it, was unleashed.

His steps were the storm, his blade lightning, death its thunder. No weapon reached him, no attack came close. Time seemed to slow and speed up simultaneously. He saw every man and soldier, every weapon and every movement directed towards him. Yet it all happened so fast that thoughts disappeared. His blade danced in his hand, dealing death to the left and to the right, pushing away bodies and lives, spraying blood and pain into the grey sky.

His sword cut unbridled through everything in its way. Until it came to a sudden halt.

Two long daggers, thin and lithe, locked his blade in a cross. Two pairs of eyes locked again – for the first time in centuries. Burning gold and calm hazel.

And in the midst of arrows aflame, smoke blotting out the sun, screams, and roars and clashing swords – time ended.

Hiob saw everything in these eyes. He saw the wall erected against insanity, thin as a veil. He saw Aquon’s past, a lifelong battle to save her. His own history was burned into them, showing him the hope he had brought into her life, the slow melting of walls, the vulnerable soul of this precious daughter. It was a memory, a dear one they shared. But it lasted only as long as lightning. And then thunder followed. The deep chasm he had driven into her heart opened before him, an abyss wider than he could ever hope to bridge. A pain so deep it was tearing long rips into the veil of sanity through which dark claws greedily reached for her.

Ilyn.

Her tear brought time back into being. A tear so tender, shame flooded over him. A tear so accusing, it shattered Hiob’s core. A tear so honest, it disarmed him in an instant. A tear so true, he knew why he had returned.

The revelation hit. ‘I have brought you back for her.’

And then it was over. Blades cried, and a kick with the boot in the chest had him fly backward. Covered in the corpses’ blood, he felt the fire of guilt consume him. Once again, their eyes locked, but this time, a wall, thicker than a mountain range, held him outside. Ilyn was in control again and beyond his reach.

She disengaged from the fight and walked towards the ships.

#

The cold wind was the only sound on the wall. Aven looked at the battlements that clawed themselves into the mountain sides like the fists of angry giants. The parapets all showed inwards, as if keeping out the mountain. But Aven knew that these walls had not been erected to fight an enemy. They were prison bars she had looked up at for centuries. Tall, towering borders that had defined the limits of her life. The life of her people. 

Now they had become the symbol of her greatest victory. She hadn’t been here since. The corpses of their enemies had been removed, their weapons collected, their supplies looted. But the blood remained – the last testament of the Nae who had executed their grim task with utmost hatred. Now they were dead. All of them. Aven had made sure of it. Nobody was to escape. Nobody to learn of their liberation except on their own terms! And yet, the very person who had set all this in motion had heard from them first. 

It seemed almost like destiny. Aven grunted and looked to her captains, who awaited her orders. 

“You know what is to be done. No trace remains. See that the blood is washed off. Repair any damage. You have until sunrise.” 

Busy labor erupted along the miles of the wall, along the access paths, the cable lifts, the towers, the quarters, the storehouses. 

Aven inspected the work and managed a whole round of the wall before nightfall. “This is crazy,” she mumbled to herself. 

“Is it?” 

She jumped and looked up. There stood Cithan, as if he had appeared out of thin air. 

“Up early, up late now too?” she managed to hide her surprise. 

“Sunrises. Sunsets. Best parts of the day.” 

Aven looked over to the west, where the sun finally broke horizontally through the cloud cover. “These days, sunrises conquer my heart quicker than sunsets.” 

“New beginnings?” Cithan mused. 

Aven looked at the Nae’s smile. “Maybe. Tell me, Cithan, do you feel ready for change?” 

“I fought alongside you against the prison guards. We all wanted out. Now the road is open.”

“And yet here we are. Still on the mountain.”

“Drastic change takes time, too. Is that what you are aiming at?” 

She shook her head. “I am not aiming at anything. I just … For centuries, I have yearned for change. And it has come, but I don’t feel ready for it yet. We cling to this mountain like an old human, raging against the end of life.”

“Old days must die for new ones to emerge, don’t you think?” 

Together, they looked towards the west, where the last rays of the day glistened on the ocean’s surface.

“You are right, Cithan. It just sometimes feels hard to let go of the past, of things as we are used to them.”

“Even a prison.” 

Even a prison, yes. 

“For a long time,” Cithan continued, “our enemy was easy to identify and our objective clear. But with your skills as our leader, I am sure we will overcome even the unknown obstacles ahead.” 

An image of three warriors approaching flashed through her mind. Not wanting to dampen Cithan’s optimism, Aven forced a smile and said, “Thank you for your confidence. I wouldn’t be here without you.” 

He bowed his head. “We wouldn’t be able to leave without you. But finally, we are free. And soon enough, we will march forth to new horizons.” Slowly, he took her hand in his. “Maybe even together.” 

Aven smiled weakly, squeezed his hand, but then let go of it. 

“May it be so.” 

#

Hiob watched the stars above him spread out as if by divine hands. No cloud broke his view, no light blinded his eyes. A silence full of peace and grace lay over the land, touching it in silver light, hushing the wind and the sounds of animals. Even the stream winding through the trees and over the meadows down in the valley, a band reflecting the glow of night, couldn’t send its rushing up to the slopes where Hiob waited.

After Aquon had single-handedly conquered a boat for them, they had left the harbor and the battle behind. Death had spread its wings with lethal force over the city at the fjord. The smoke rising from the ruins was still visible the next day when they had climbed the mountainside and crossed over into the next valley.

Ilyn hadn’t spoken a word since. Neither had Aquon, so all the questions and disturbances inside of Hiob’s mind and heart remained unspoken. But they wanted out. They needed to get out. Even though his memories had settled ever more firmly in their correct places over the last two days, these feelings needed air, urging him to break the silence.

And the heavens had given him this night. Aquon was sleeping inside the roofless ruins of the small outpost – inaudible. Hiob hadn’t closed his eyes, even though it wasn’t his turn to stand guard. It was Ilyn’s. She sat outside on a big boulder overlooking the valley. Or at least that’s what Hiob thought she was doing since he couldn’t see her face. The edges of her silhouette glowed white in the moonlight while her posture remained motionless like a statue hewn from marble.

Silence offered him this moment. Yet for an hour he waited, unable to step forward, torn between the burning in his chest and the paralyzing fear. He remembered so little. His time with Ilyn had been so brief, just fleeting, yet so laden with meaning that he had to catch his breath every time he allowed the memories to rush over him, flood him with emotions so deep and raw they swallowed him whole.

Again, he stared at the stars. The missing ceiling showed him the heavens plainly. He took a deep breath and stepped outside, no door left to halt his approach.

Silently, slowly, he stepped next to the boulder and dared to lay his eyes on hers. These fiery eyes were open, sparkling in starlight, attentive, watchful, searching the night – but didn’t look back at Hiob. 

“Ilyn,” he said, looking away, “I hoped you would forget.” He glanced at her, but when she did not attempt to answer him, he continued. “But when I looked into your eyes, there, down in the midst of this battle, when time halted, … I saw that you hadn’t.”

Once again, he paused, trying to remember what he had planned to say, had wanted to say. But in this moment, words seemed to elude him, unable to give form and substance to his feelings. “Ilyn,” he said, and finally she turned her head and looked at him, “I was unworthy of your love. I was unfit to receive this trust and devotion you poured into me.”

Her eyes pierced his soul, yet the deep wells of her own spirit remained closed to him. 

“I know,” he said, caught, “I allowed you to do so. I opened myself to your love, but … I … wasn’t ready, wasn’t prepared …”

Ilyn glided down from the rock as if its surface were polished. “Don’t do this, Hiob,” she said and walked past him to another edge a few feet away, her back turned toward him.

Hiob couldn’t say he understood. “I know my apology comes too late by decades and … and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness … I just …”

“Hiob,” she said again. “Don’t do this.”

Hiob’s shoulders slumped. “I am sorry, Ilyn, I don’t know what you mean.”

The silence that followed stretched into the eternities. But eventually, Ilyn spoke. “Hiob, it wasn’t wrong of you to open yourself to my love. The love you returned was genuine. Don’t try to deny that. Don’t diminish what we shared. It doesn’t help me. It doesn’t heal. If you are trying to help, call the wound for what it is.”

She turned her head slightly, so he was able to see her profile, her skin grey in the moonlight, her features touched by silver. “Hiob,” she said, and he saw the walls in her eyes open up just a sliver. He dared to step forward until he was close enough to touch her with his outstretched arm.

“Your sin wasn’t that you were unprepared or imperfect in your love for me. It wasn’t that it was raw and unrefined, naïve, or poorly planned.” Again, she looked off into the distance. “We all have fallen, we all have failed. No …”

When she turned around, her walls were torn down, her soul open to him, and behind those walls, tears welled up. “No, your sin was that you feared the future, that you hesitated because of your mortality, that you dreaded leaving me through death more than allowing the present to take hold of us.”

Hiob felt a lump in his throat choke down his words, but he fought against it. “I thought the deeper our love would be allowed to grow, the harder the loss would become.”

Ilyn nodded. “And that was your mistake, Hiob. Yes, I would have lost you to mortality one day, but your love would have been redeeming, the gift of your soul my salvation. But after giving it to me and showing me redemption,” she said, her voice fading into a whisper, “you chose to take it away from me.”

Hiob stretched out his hand to catch her falling tears. In an instant, he saw her walls closing again. His own eyes welled up with tears. Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.

“What neither age nor death nor eternity could take away,” said Ilyn, her voice growing in strength, “you decided to take from me. You were the only one who could, and you did – out of fear! This is your sin, Hiob. And before you fully understand this, I cannot forgive.”

She stepped forward, and her eyes came so close to his that they swallowed him – only this time, he didn’t see the past, but the present. A wasteland, a desert. A once fertile land that had been burned down and left to die. And in this moment, in the face of his sin, his cracked soul shattered.

“What you have given me, you have taken, and with it, you have ripped out this part of my heart. It’s gone, it’s dead, … just a memory now, like the ashes of a long dead fire.”

She left him standing there and took the silence of the night with her.

Hiob fell to his knees as his mind filled with the sound of breaking rocks and rushing waters – a storm that tore through his soul. He beheld the fallout of his actions. Inconsiderate as he may have been, the consequences were decided by his deeds, not his intentions.

Regret and guilt racked his soul, threatening to kill him. There was no end to his suffering, no relief to his sins, no path to set things right, no ointment to heal Ilyn’s soul – and none to heal his own.

And as the night grew darker, clawing its shadows into his spirit, there was only one remedy – a barrier. He remembered how to shut these emotions out, how to smother this pain, how to suppress this shame, how to forget the guilt.

Hiob grabbed the hilt of his sword. He could feel the cold metal through the leather as if the strength of war was giving him power, pulsating through his veins to overcome the torment.

A shell formed around his heart, his soul, sealing off the agony from his life, separating it from himself.

‘I haven’t brought you back for her.’

You brought me back to be your weapon? Then, Aquon, give me a war.

When Hiob arose, a new day dawned, and his soul was closed.

 

Unforgiving

The day was clouded in steel and silver when two Nae and a man rose to the last ridge of the mountain range. A vast plain opened before them.

Hiob stared down at the black wasteland of shredded rock, cut through by a river. It sprawled its path out through the black gravel and sand, splitting and combining in an ever-increasing delta before emptying its bright blue waters into a dark blue ocean.

“There it is,” said Aquon, who’d halted on the ridge, staring towards the ocean.

“I didn’t think I’d ever come back here,” said Ilyn.

Hiob beheld the mountain, standing rogue and lonely at the shore. It seemed to break through the crust of the earth, heaping up gigantic plates of dark rock with ease and so high that last winter’s snow still gripped its northern peaks even in the fall. Its location split the river delta in half, creating its own island, removed, almost aloft from this world. Fog lay over the ice-cold river, adding to the feeling that the mountain had no foundation and instead seemed to hover. Faint swaths of clouds clung to the mountainsides, giving them a greater connection to the heavens than to the earth.

“This is where this dead Nae came from?” Hiob asked, trying to understand this almost surreal … building that nature had created. He felt as if he was standing at the end of a king’s hall, staring towards an imposing throne, ruling over everything beneath it.

Aquon nodded. “And she should still be up there, not dead back there in the forest.” With this, he started downhill towards the plain, with Ilyn trailing right behind him.

Hiob was left with all his other questions, since Aquon had been more than reluctant to reveal answers. So Hiob waited, still contemplating the beauty of this place. It was both dead and alive, for he saw no trees or plants on the plain, but felt a raw life pulsate through the landscape. The river drew its strong blue color onto the black canvas of the plain, the mountain watching over it all, defying the flowing waters of the river on one side and the ocean’s grinding surge on the other.

Finally, he followed the two Nae. They were heading towards this mountain, so his curiosity should soon be stilled. When Hiob reached the plain, Aquon and Ilyn had already marched on, crossing the river beds as if the currents were nonexistent and the cold of the water not worth their attention.

As he entered the river, the freezing water immediately broke through his boots, sending a piercing pain up his legs and feet. At the deepest branches, the current rose to his hips and tried to sweep him away. Soon, he became numb to the pain and marched stoically forward, trying to catch up with the relentlessness of his two companions.

Lost in his effort, he didn’t realize how the mountain grew in his sight, rising higher and higher over the plain until the peaks disappeared behind the slopes. The Nae finally stopped, letting Hiob catch up to them. 

When he looked up, the mountain seemed to take in all of his field of vision, blotting out everything else. But there was something else he hadn’t noticed before. Structures had become visible on the sides of the rock – structures made not by nature but by the hand of the living. They were so high up he could hardly distinguish them for what they were, but because their lines crossed against the structure of the rock, their artificiality showed.

Unlike Hiob, the two Nae weren’t staring up the mountainsides. As he followed their gaze and looked down again, he saw a wall below, heaped up against the river in a crescent shape, freeing a large area on the plain filled with warehouses and barracks. Hiob saw carts and stables, low-lying buildings erected to withstand floods and storms, and paths crossing between them. Everything was designed for efficiency. Beauty was absent from this place, as was life.

“Where are the people?” he asked the two Nae, who seemed to have turned to stone. The whole place didn’t seem abandoned or run down. Hiob half expected whosoever lived and worked here to suddenly finish lunch and jump back out onto the streets. But apart from the rushing of the waters and the quiet whistling of the winds, no noise was audible – no voices, no tools, no animals, nothing.

“We should find out,” Aquon finally said and found a small footpath downward between the wall of giant boulders.

Hiob followed Aquon while Ilyn spied into the corners and the cracks of the mountain as if she expected cavemen or wild birds to spontaneously spring from them. But Hiob got the notion that imaginary beasts would not be their problem.

They walked the streets for a bit before Aquon took a right turn and opened one of the barracks’ doors. He went in but stopped immediately in his tracks. There wasn’t much to be seen. Rows of beds lined the walls, the sheets neatly folded, the place empty, no lights, no people.

Aquon left again, and Hiob followed. Ilyn joined them, holding two of her throwing knives in her hands. At her inquisitive look, Aquon shook his head.

They continued, passing some stables that were clean and void of horses or oxen or any other creature. A blacksmith’s forge proved to be as cold as the winter, the fire gone. Some blades, horseshoes, armor plates, and arrowheads lay on the tables along with pliers and hammers, but no hands held them. The place, again, didn’t seem abandoned to Hiob, but as if life had ended all of a sudden; as if the people who once populated it simply snapped out of existence.

As they approached a central square, Hiob dared to speak in a hushed voice, “Is this where the Nae came from?” 

“No,” said Aquon and looked up toward the mountain. “She came from up there but never should have even made it down here.” He walked to a structure of large wooden beams in the center of the open space. Only then did Hiob see the huge cable going upwards towards the mountain. Six thick ropes hung down from a place beyond the clouds, ending in huge wheels that were connected to winches and horizontal wheels, fit to harness a dozen animals.

“Haulages,” Hiob realized as he saw a huge platform at the end of one of the cables, designed to lift great amounts of cargo.

“To supply my soldiers,” said Aquon.

“Without the animals, these are useless, though,” said Ilyn.

“I assume we might find more answers at the upper ends of these ropes,” said Hiob, looking to where the cables disappeared out of sight. He turned to the Nae, “Is there another way?”

Aquon looked around again. There were no animals to aid their ascent, and the waters of the rivers seemed too weak to lift heavy equipment and human freight. Hiob assumed that this was the reason why he hadn’t seen any water wheels.

“There is a path,” Aquon said, “but I don’t remember it being used much – not at all, to be honest.”

He turned towards the black cliffs ahead of them, but Ilyn called him back, “Aquon, they can’t just have left!”

“Maybe they are up there.”

“You think they would abandon one of their most crucial supply bases?” she asked. “You don’t really believe that.”

Aquon looked to the ground, then up again along the cables as they vanished into the mists. “There are no signs of a fight. And judging by the distance between here and where we came across the dead Nae and her companion, this place hasn’t been void of life for longer than several weeks.”

“But where have they gone? Where could they have gone?” She gave air to the question that haunted them all. “Why?”

“Maybe their task was completed,” said Aquon, “maybe there were no more Evon to be guarded.”

“We saw two of Cevon’s kin,” Ilyn held against him. “Besides, the guards wouldn’t just leave even if their duty had become vain. They would let you know!”

Aquon nodded. “You are right, daughter. I don’t have any answers. I guess we have to dig deeper to find them.”

He turned to Hiob, “Are you ready for some climbing?”

#

Aven had broken through the clouds and reached the peak before the sun had. She faced the eastern horizon as the golden light of a new day melted the morning into hope; a hope that was slipping through Aven’s fingers as she stared out over the ocean, invisible under a sea of glowing clouds.

This mountain top, the highest summit of her former prison, had become her refuge. A place so close to the heavens that the pull of gravity, the weight of earth and existence itself, faded, felt almost removed.

But today, the height and light failed to lift her. The troubles of this world weighed like an anchor on her soul, pinning her to her prison. How long had she labored to free her people? She had forgotten the centuries. They had started to blur under the aim of a single goal, the highest goal – freedom.

The walls had been breached, the fortresses sacked, the enemy killed, the gates opened. And yet, she was still here.

I was a prisoner here all my life. I might have broken through the walls, but I am still imprisoned in my mind. The past that locked us up in here is still a chain around my ankle.

Aven wrapped her cloak tight around her body, as this realization chilled her bones from the inside.

“Aven!” a faint voice echoed up the mountain. The Nae looked down to see a single small figure follow her tracks in the snow up towards the summit. Nivee.

For a long moment, Aven contemplated the zeal of her sister. Nivee had probably followed her simply to cheer her up, but as the blond princess made her way up towards the commander of the army, Aven felt as if the world came up here to snatch her back, to pull her down again, never letting her go free.

Another revelation struck in that instant. It was a thought she’d often had before, but every time it made another appearance, understanding sank deeper. Immortality really is a curse. Humans may die and flee the prisons of their own making, but we Nae, we live with our failures forever. Only steel or nature may bring death to us. Old age is the curse of our Father for the sin of Cii.

“Aven,” groaned Nivee as she finally reached the summit. She let herself fall on her butt, following her sister’s gaze towards the east. “You made me come all the way up here!”

Aven didn’t answer but sat down beside her.

“Why are you even up here?” Nivee asked.

“I needed time to clear my head.” The truth was, as soon as she had closed her eyes last evening, she saw through the eyes of this human again. And the enemy was closer every time. She knew they were almost here, the confrontation imminent and inevitable – because her father wanted it so. “Besides, with all the fog you gathered, I had to climb high to find the sun.” 

“Wasn’t it your idea to use my gift to create cover?” 

Aven nodded. “As I said, I just wanted some time alone.” 

“You could have just gone for a midnight swim in the lake,” said Nivee, leaning her head against her sister’s shoulder. “Do you remember when we used to do this in the moonlight?”

Aven did. In a time when we weren’t fully aware of the conflict we had been born into. We were oblivious to the brutality of the world, of the pain of imprisonment.

“Those were good times,” Aven conceded. Times so far distant, the memory seems fake.

“I wish we could just leave,” Nivee confessed.

“Me too, Nivee. Me too.” Aven laid her arm around Nivee’s shoulders in a protective manner.

For a moment, the sisters bathed in the light of the new day – a day whose joys and horrors lay yet hidden underneath this blanket of clouds. Aven felt the pain and sorrow finally lose their grip on her, even if for just this moment.

“I love you, Nivee, sister,” said Aven.

Nivee looked up and smiled at Aven – a smile so innocent, so honest, it made Aven hope for a better world and a brighter tomorrow. Today, their father would meet his brother. Maybe the world would shatter, but maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the day would pass, and tomorrow the world would be new, full of possibilities, free, raw, and fresh.

“I love you too, Aven, sister,” said Nivee.

“They are here, aren’t they?” inquired Aven regarding Nivee’s appearance on the mountain top.

Nivee nodded. “The spies saw them cross the plain.” 

The pull of gravity.

Aven arose and stretched out a helping hand towards her sister. “Let’s head back down to meet them.”

#

Hiob felt a stiff gale tear at his coat as he climbed ever higher. The wind, driven westward from the ocean, hit the mountain and rose upward, half trying to push Hiob and the Nae upward, half attempting to tear them off the cliff-side. The path under their feet was unworthy of its name. It was a steep and winding line, more of a crack in the rock than an actual way. It forced them to climb steep sections without safety and to cross ledges hardly wider than a foot. Losing balance even once would result in a fatal fall.

Hiob shrugged off the thought of plummeting to his death and focused instead on the very steps he had to take next. Aquon and Ilyn were ahead of him, light-footed and apparently unfazed by the height, the wind, or anything else that could prove instantly lethal. Ilyn seemed to float upwards, her movement as graceful as efficient. Aquon denied his strong build and the weight of his armor and equipment, climbing with a speed and ease Hiob could only covet. So far, the two Nae had been sympathetic with their human companion, taking breaks and allowing him to catch up.

I hate to be weighing them down. Hiob increased his efforts, ignoring the burning in his legs and arms, and tried to find a pace he could sustain, even if it exhausted him. And for a time, it worked. A trance fell upon him, and his body seemed to move on its own. In his mind, he contemplated the thick clouds clinging to the mountainsides, the smell of salt in the air, driven up from the ocean. Then even these impressions faded until the stable and hard rigidity of the rock under his hands and feet consumed all his thoughts.

They ascended further and further up while the hours passed, and the sun climbed in the sky. Exhausted and inattentive, Hiob only realized that the two Nae had stopped when he almost tumbled into Ilyn. The sudden encounter broke his concentration and brought his mind back to their task. 

Ilyn and Aquon were standing on a little plateau they had just reached. The atmosphere had changed completely. The temperature had dropped noticeably. Thick clouds swirled around them, clouding the slopes. Now and then, a gust of wind disrupted the fog and offered them a clear view of the path ahead. 

A great gap lay before them. On the other side of the abyss, a huge fortress perched on the mountainside like an eagle’s nest. Only a flat stone bridge crossed the chasm between them and the castle, wide enough for a cart. 

On the outward side of the plateau, Hiob caught sight of a platform with wheels. From there, cables hung back down into the clouds where they disappeared from sight. They had found the top of the haulage. Supplies must have run up here for the whole castle, for whosoever once manned its walls.

“Here we are,” said Aquon, putting a hand on Hiob’s shoulder but not taking his eyes off the massive stronghold.

“Is this the only … entrance?” asked Hiob, spying through the mist towards the castle walls that seemed to grow out of the mountain slopes.

Aquon took his hand off Hiob’s shoulder and shook his head. “There is one other, on the opposite side. It overhangs the ocean, so that supplies can be lifted directly from ships.”

Hiob looked further and saw walls extending from both sides of the fortress, running along the cliff sides as if trying to crown the mountain.

“The gate is open,” said Ilyn.

Hiob stared across the bridge, trying to sharpen the contours of the fortress through the clouds. How can you even see that? The light had become brighter as the sun had become visible as a pale circle above the clouds, but the mist still clung to the mountain as if trying to conceal the castle from their view.

Ilyn’s fingers played along her belt of throwing knives. Her eyes darted to Aquon in an unstated question. He nodded and retrieved his axes from the pack on his shoulder, securing them on his back once more, ready for any battle. Hiob took the waterskin that the Nae offered him and took a deep gulp. They were apparently close to their destination. Aquon put his bag down. They weren’t going to take anything with them besides weapons.

Aquon drank the rest of the water after Ilyn had taken a sip and threw the skin on the pack. Facing the fortress, he said, “Let’s find these devils.”

Without hesitation, he crossed the bridge, Ilyn at his heels. Hiob followed last. The bridge had no handrail, and the winds tore at his clothes. Though he should have been used to the height by now, the sheer void to his left and right made his head spin. 

He decided to focus on the keep instead. His awe at the huge structure built on this forbidding place quieted his fear. The gate was taller than most buildings he had seen erected by human hand, but it was only as wide as the arm span of two grown men. Aquon and Ilyn slipped inside, leaving Hiob with a sense of loneliness.

Everything seemed elusive. This mountain at the end of the world, the abandoned outpost void of any life, and now this fortress, built by what must have been the efforts of decades or even centuries, and yet it was unguarded. He shook his head. Aquon would need to do some explaining! With a last look over his shoulder, Hiob followed the two Nae.

As he crossed through the crack in the right wing of the gate, he was welcomed by a deep calm. The sound of the wind was blocked, the ocean’s roar no longer audible, and utter silence reigned inside the walls. Aquon and Ilyn’s steps touched the ground like falling feathers. His own boots felt like hammers hitting stone, but he made an effort not to disturb the peace too much.

The beam normally locking the tall gate lay on the floor near the inside wall. The courtyard lay in orderly silence. No people, no clutter, no movement broke its slumber except for the swirling fog. 

Hiob tried to breathe more quietly, but every noise he made was amplified by the silence reigning in this dead place, for dead it was. Everything was made of stone and ice. No water, no plants, no animals, no breathing things at all. 

Above the mist, he detected watchtowers high above the thick walls. Almost all of them were pointed toward the mountain, ready to spot and fight any enemy approaching from the slopes. 

Aquon, holding one of his axes in his right hand, gestured towards the stairs leading up the walls. Ilyn moved up the ramparts with a quietude worthy of envy. It likely did not even matter if they were silent or not – Hiob had seen no evidence that there were ears to spy on their sounds. Reaching the foot of the stairs, he dared to speak. 

“What is this place, Aquon?” 

The Nae seemed more annoyed with the question itself than with the sudden noise it caused. “A prison door,” he answered and marched up the stairs after Ilyn.

Hiob wasn’t ready for defeat yet, so he ran after his mentor and reached him in front of the battlement. “Then why is it open?” The human looked up to the flagpoles sticking out over the walls – no banner or standard was flying to signal a nation, a people, or a cause. “Why is this place dead?” 

On the stair landing, Aquon turned and blocked Hiob from reaching the top. “Isn’t finding out  the reason why we are here?” 

“I assume so,” Hiob answered, “but I don’t know anything about this place, nor the people who once inhabited it, nor the prisoners who it was supposed to hold, nor the reason why you are connected to all of this!” As Hiob’s anger rose, Aquon’s anger seemed to fade. “If you want me to be your weapon,” Hiob continued, “then let me be one that can think and reason, that can make judgments based on precise information and not on hearsay or assumptions.” 

Aquon breathed out heavily and moved aside, so Hiob could join him on the top of the wall. Together, they stared down at a small valley that was more of a crack in the rocks leading from the inner gate below them further into the heights and depths of the mountain. Fog clouded the valley and soon shrouded it in oblivion as they tried to pierce it with their gaze. 

“I was once young,” Aquon said, staring at the runes on his axe’s blades as if they held the keys to his past. “Remember how I told you that the second morning ended due to events connected to this mountain?” 

Hiob nodded, turned sideways, and leaned against the crenelated outer wall with his hip. “You told me that the dead Nae you encountered in the North was connected to it.” 

Aquon did nothing to acknowledge Hiob’s answer. The maelstrom of memories had swallowed him whole and dragged him down to seldom-visited places. “I was young and naive, without a full grasp of the brutality of life. The world was good in those days, the sun brighter, the seasons softer.

“I hadn’t even lived a full millennium in those days. I did have many siblings, but … one brother was especially close to my heart. We had been born almost in the same era, just a few human generations apart – which, for Nae, could count as him being my twin. 

“I don’t remember all the things we did in the centuries we roamed the earth. Everything was still so young, even the world itself. Rivers were still grinding the valleys they now traverse, glaciers were still carving out the lakes their meltwater would one day fill. Cities were rare and sparse, humans not much more than animals, living in leather tents and hunting the old beasts with weapons of bone and stone. 

“My brother and I rode wild horses to catch the horizon, climbed mountains so high we could hardly breathe anymore. We found places so warm and lucid, full of fruits and lacking every winter, we had to leave them again, lest they make us weak. We crossed oceans so far it took the humans millennia to find ways to cross them. War was far away in those days, the wrath of Cii and his sons was already fading into legend …” 

Aquon put down his axe, leaned it against the wall, and looked into Hiob’s eyes for a short moment. “The world was turning as it should. Days followed nights, and darkness was never infinite. The times of the split earth were long gone. Friends and family followed our excitement, gathering for our adventures like snow to fill an avalanche. The new world was ours for the taking …” The Nae’s eyes wandered off again, looking back into a time Hiob had never seen. “And then I met her.” 

“She was living far away from where we were born, a descendant of the Nae of Light, whose ancestors had never lived through the dark days before the Dawn. After the First Dawn, they had mostly kept to themselves, separate from us descendants of the Nae of Night, but it hadn’t taken long before the two people came together, forming one strong race of Nae. Yet a few of the Nai, as we once called them, chose to stay secluded, living in small colonies at the far reaches of distant continents.

“We had been battling a leviathan, a beast of the old times that had been put into the waters by the wrath of Cii’s father. Maybe we thought ourselves liberators, cleansing the world of an old darkness that had no right to survive in our time.

“We lost that particular fight, though, and our ship broke asunder. Few of us survived that day, but among them were my brother and I. Spit out by the wrath of the ocean, we reached some unknown shore.” 

As if to underline his tale, Aquon fell quiet and turned away, staring in the other direction, down beyond the reaches of the fortress and mountains and towards a raging ocean, hardly visible below the golden mist clouding the day. Hiob became aware of the sound of these distant waves and realized it had happened here! They landed here. 

“The continent is beautiful further south,” Aquon continued. “Less harsh. Less inhospitable. Some of the Nai found us and took us down the coast to their city. And that is where I met her. Ivendei. Her hair was as bright as the sun, and her eyes filled with a fire I had never been allowed to taste before. I had sailed the seas and conquered dragons, but in her eyes, I saw a heaven yet to reach. 

“Battered and diminished in numbers, we cherished the hospitality of her people and stayed with them for many months, healing our wounds, resting our spirits. Ivendei showed me this land, and the bond that formed between us grew into a child.” 

For a moment, Aquon was ripped out of his history and looked at the last thing in his life that linked him to that distant love. Ilyn was standing a few feet away, right above the gate leading into the inside valley, staring out into the distance, feet planted wide, arms crossed, seemingly indifferent to the story being told, but Hiob was sure she was listening. 

“I was so full of this love and this joy that my discernment of malice, envy, and hatred had fallen asleep – vanished. Therefore, I didn’t see it coming when I was betrayed …

“I was away for a time because I had received word that a few of my band had survived and found refuge on an island. After weeks of journeying, I found eleven of my best comrades still alive and well. But my joy at their survival was not to last.

“When we returned, my brother had turned against me. Ivendei did not love me anymore, he claimed. She had chosen him instead, and I was to leave if I held anything dear in the relationship we once had.” 

Hiob could almost feel the end of the story. Aquon was no one to be commanded or demanded of. Not by his brother or anyone else. 

“I demanded to see her,” Aquon said, now fully lost in that awful moment, “I wanted to hear it from her own mouth, but Cevon did not allow it. So we fought. The fight was rough and brutal and long. With my eleven comrades that I had just recovered, we fought the legions of the Nae now obeying Cevon. By the time my wrath’s fire had cooled enough to acknowledge our pending defeat, our imminent death, we were down to seven, and when we had managed to disengage, five. I lost one more Nae at the gates, her skull pierced by an arrow. Another one died of his wounds a day later.” 

A silence reigned for a time, reflecting the grief and pain Aquon must have felt on that long-distant, but never forgotten day. This awful day when he lost his lover, child, and brother. 

Aquon’s voice was hoarse when he continued, but his words were determined. “With the remaining two Nae as my last friends on earth, I raised an army worthy of the hosts of Cii. And after a few years, we returned, ransacked the city, and burned it to the ground. Whoever survived, we bound; whoever died, we left to rot.

“When I found Ivendei, she was on the threshold of death. As if giving birth to the child of the man she had betrayed weighed on her, she had never fully recovered from the labor, wasting away for years as it seemed. I held my dagger to her heart, but had no hope it would be strong enough to pierce the stone it would encounter underneath her skin. 

“I took the little child, my daughter, and left the traitor to decay.” 

Aquon had to clear his throat to continue. “For my brother, death was too great a mercy. My fury was not yet quenched. We dragged him and Ivendei’s kin to this mountain and built a prison for a nation. This is where I locked Cevon up, along with all those who betrayed me, my former friends, and Ivendei’s people alike. I marked them, left my army to guard them, and tried to forget them.

“I raised my daughter in the hope she would never know of the fiery forge from which she was hewn. But even though memory might not serve a child, the traumas etched on the soul in the first years never fade.” 

It was only then that Aquon faced Ilyn, looking into her eyes. Had her mother’s eyes been as fiery as well? “She had to bear a burden she was never responsible for, suffer for an injustice committed before she was even born. And she has borne it ever since with an erect head and the strength of a thousand men.” 

Hiob felt conflicted over the emotions battling within him. The deep sympathy for Aquon and Ilyn fought against the rising tide of horror and grief in the face of the tragedies both of them suffered. 

“Your army has guarded this prison ever since?” Hiob asked, forcing himself to think of the task at hand, not all the implications this history had on his life, the love he once shared with Ilyn, and the sanity of both her and Aquon – and possibly himself.

Aquon returned to the present and nodded. “As it seems, they did so only until recently.” 

“When they all suddenly … vanished?” asked Hiob. 

Aquon cleared his throat and blinked the tears away, still battling all the emotions in the wake of this wave of memories. He nodded again and took his axe. 

“Armies don’t vanish like clouds!” These were Ilyn’s words. Judging by her composure, she hadn’t allowed herself to sink deep into her father’s – and her own – past. 

“So, we’ll keep searching for signs,” Aquon said, starting towards the stairs, obviously glad about a task to distract him. 

“Whatever happened, they seem to have disappeared,” Hiob objected. “If they left in an exodus, then they must have used ships because there are no traces of a whole host leaving this camp. If a fight took place, then the victors must have made sure to remove any evidence of it. It doesn’t look as if they suffered a famine either, because there was enough food. If there had been a sickness, there would be corpses and graves, and the last to die wouldn’t have been able to bury themselves.” 

“What if they threw the dead into the ocean and, in the end, decided to walk out into the water themselves?” suggested Ilyn. 

Aquon shook his head. “They would have sent out a message before.” 

“Maybe they didn’t want to spread the disease,” countered Ilyn.

“Why didn’t they leave any message?” Aquon asked. “A letter, easy to discover. A journal, open on a table. A message carved into stone. There must be something!” Ilyn and Hiob could hold him no longer. The Nae ran down the stairs and broke through every door he encountered, trying to find the reason why his people seemed to have been swallowed by the mountain. 

“Aquon!” Hiob shouted once they reached the courtyard. The Nae emerged from a building and paced over to the next. “We won’t find an answer here.” 

Aquon took a moment to grasp the meaning of Hiob’s words, but once he did, he stopped and bellowed, “I had this place guarded by an army for a reason!” 

Hiob tried to hush him, “Well, if the nation of your brother is still on that mountain, now they know we are here.” 

“I won’t just walk in there before I know there is nothing to be found here,” said Aquon and walked off once again; this time, with Ilyn at his heels.

#

Hiob found himself left alone in the courtyard. Aquon kept searching the keep, unable to acknowledge the broken pieces of his own work. The army he had raised centuries ago – gone. An enemy who was his own brother – no longer imprisoned. 

The human kept to his opinion. If there were answers, they were to be found further in the center of this conflict, at the heart of this mountain. 

Hiob walked along the inside of the wall. It was roughly hewn, yet the huge boulders were set with skill for effectiveness and even beauty. If this place had been taken by battle, why was there no sign of it? Had a stratagem taken the fortress? Treachery? A betrayal? Walking further towards the gate, Hiob found a scratch on the wall. It could stem from a misguided blade, missing its opponent. But if there had been a fight, where was the blood, the bodies? 

Shaking his head, Hiob reached the gate leading into the valley. One side of the two-winged defense stood halfway open; the beam, again, lay on the ground, unused, but not burst. 

Dense fog pushed in through the crack in the gate, revealing little to Hiob of the world within the mountain. As he came closer, he beheld the outside of the open gate wing. No denying brute force here. Deep scratches and old burns ran over the thick wood. In some parts, the spearheads were still stuck in it, yet they had been unable to break it. This outside of the gate testified to sieges and successfully defended attacks. 

Hiob stepped closer and stretched out his hand to touch the massive wood – battered and beaten, but not defeated. Yet before his hand was able to reach it, a movement in the corner of his eyes made the swordsman turn his head. 

A woman stood but a few paces away, revealed by the shifting fog. In a frozen moment, Hiob saw neither the blades in her hands nor the tight black armor she wore, ready to strike, but only her eyes. Blue and powerful as an ice-cold lake on a sun-flooded day. Eyes showing a soul as intelligent as lethal, but as for now, watching. Hiob found curiosity in them as well as a nuanced fear. 

She contemplated him as much as he did her. In this moment, Hiob found himself on a threshold, standing neither on her side of the mountain nor within the keep with Aquon. This place held more secrets that he had yet to discover. Indeed, he had only scratched the surface. In these eyes, he found more to be revealed. 

Then the woman blinked, and the mesmerizing ban her eyes had laid over Hiob broke. It was only then that he saw the fine downward crescent under her left eye. 

A gust of wind whirled the fog around and clouded the woman as she turned away. A single strand of hair – loosened from the knot on the back of her head – was the last thing that vanished. 

Hiob’s sword was in his hand before he had chosen to draw it – his body reacted before his mind could. He took a step forward, crossing the gate’s threshold. If at all possible, the silence intensified. The fog was still thick, but he could see enough to fend off any attack slower than an arrow. He proceeded. 

“Hiob!” Ilyn had found him. The human didn’t turn back, but raised his left hand, signaling the Nae to follow him. 

Just a moment later, she appeared to his left while Aquon seemed to manifest out of the fog on his right, axe in hand. 

“Did you see something?” he asked in a whisper. 

For a moment, Hiob contemplated the encounter. Then he nodded. “A woman. She wore the same sign as the dead Nae we first discovered.” 

“They are still here,” Aquon grunted. But instead of ordering them to retreat, he loosened his other blade from his back and now seemed ready to fight a cavalry onslaught on his own. Pointing with his chin, he urged them forward. 

 

Contorted

Aven saw nothing. The thickness of the fog was so complete that it seemed to aid her in her task. It suppressed every noise and created a blanket of silence in which even her slow breath seemed loud. 

As she retreated from the gate she had broken through just a few months earlier, she felt as though her body was not really there. The world seemed to have fallen off and spirited her far away into annihilation – her thoughts and feelings far removed from the actual events taking place. 

Standing at the wall of the keep, she had overheard a story not meant for her ears. A story she knew but also had never heard before. Her task had been to watch the three enemies from afar, ensuring they came up into the mountain. So she was present when they reached the keep and searched the empty rooms, halls, and battlements. She stood thirty feet below Aquon when he rested and told the human about an eon long past, which now stretched its fingers back towards the present. Aven had hardly dared to breathe, lest the sound of it make her miss any words.

She’d listened to the tale of Aquon and Cevon, brothers, companions, best friends – rivals, traitors, sworn enemies. The story she had heard out of Aquon’s mouth was strangely familiar. She had first heard it from her father, and it had been repeated often from his people on the mountain. But the names were flipped, the whole story upside down, heroes and villains in the wrong places.

For centuries, she had known the world to be one way. And now a few words of a stranger, an enemy, had shaken the way she saw the world? An unfamiliar pain grew inside her. Try as she might, she couldn’t cast it aside and ignore it like a minor battle wound or a punch received and quickly absorbed. The very ground under her feet shifted, making her head spin. Suddenly, her world full of answers turned into a hell loaded with questions. As much as she yearned to ask them now, to confront everyone involved and find a solution to stabilize her world again, time was against her. 

When she finally arrived at the point that she wanted the enemies to reach, she managed to shrug off the feeling of uncertainty. The story she had just overheard was of no consequence. It was probably just another lie of the man she would kill today. She could confront her father about the discrepancies after that. A voice in her head told her that later she couldn’t undo a killing, but the trap had been laid, the prey had taken the bait – there was no turning back now. 

# 

Hiob couldn’t see a thing. Even the tip of his sword faded in this strange, thick mist. He tried to penetrate it with his eyes, to force shape and feature from it, but to no avail. The harder he tried, the more lightheaded he became, so he looked down at the ground. Seeing his feet planted firmly at every step on solid rock soothed him. The earth was still there, and he was able to approach whatever waited for them in this mountain valley from his adamant battle stance. 

Yet, with every step he took, he felt like descending deeper into his own grave. He shouldn’t have followed the Nae. Not into this fog, which stole not only vision but also sound. It was suicide to approach an unknown number of enemies with a force of three. They should have closed the gate and waited for the weather to clear. 

But then, they still wouldn’t have known what they were up against. Aquon never told him how many people he had imprisoned up here. And who could tell into how many they might have grown over the space of many, many Nae generations? Was the mountain even able to sustain a great population? Maybe the two Nae they found in the north were just survivors of a huge battle that almost obliterated both armies? But again, where were the corpses? The fallen weapons? The blood and gore? Who was this one Nae he had just seen dissolve into the fog? Was she the last survivor? Or a scout? 

Whatever awaited them in the center of this fog, it had a gravity that pulled them relentlessly toward it. This conflict had been kept for far too long. Hiob was determined to end it today, to take this shadow off his mentor’s shoulders, even if they all had to die for it. 

Hiob knew they were getting closer when the ground under his feet smoothed and flattened out. The rough stone first became hewn and then set in with stone tiles, ornamented, cracked, and as old as time itself. 

He slowed his already careful steps. The fog seemed to clear slightly, allowing his sight to travel a few feet further. Snow started to fall now, the flakes almost black against the white backdrop. And just as Hiob halted, with Aquon guarding his right and Ilyn on his left side, wind arose, pulling away the fog as one might pull a shroud from the dead. 

Spears and arrows in every direction pierced through the mist, revealing a host of enemies. Hiob stopped in his tracks, finding himself and his companions surrounded by a ring of Nae. The first and second lines pointed their spears at them, and archers stood in two rows elevated behind them as if on rising stairs – their arrows knocked and aimed at the intruders.

With a sweeping look, Hiob estimated their numbers to be at least fifty, but there were probably more. Their dark armor was adorned with silver ornaments. None of them wore a helmet, and everyone showed the mark of the crescent under their left eye. 

Aquon grabbed his second axe, ready to fight the army on his own if he must. Ilyn pulled multiple throwing knives – she had an almost eager expression as if the outlook of spilling blood preyed on her mind. 

Hiob knew that his two companions might have a chance of surviving for a minute, but he himself saw no remedy against the archers. This was no fight he could win with his sword. He cursed inwardly. 

Just then, the rows of archers split in front of them, and a group of Nae approached, coming to a halt behind the spearmen. 

The man in the center showed a faint resemblance to Aquon, albeit softer and older. His hair was much brighter, and his build was not quite as broad. He wore neither armor nor weapon. Beside him stood the woman who had lured them onwards. A warrioress to the bone – two long blades still drawn, even though the group was protected by a score of fighters. On his other side stood another woman who could have been a sister to the first, if not for the blond hair. More Nae stood behind them like scavengers, eager for the leftovers of the fight to come. 

Hiob only lowered his weapon when Aquon did. The Nae took a step forward and faced the enemy with the tranquility of a still pond on a windless day. 

No sign of joy accompanied Cevon’s greeting. “So we meet again.” 

#

“I hoped this day would never come,” said Aquon, his words as dry as old bones. 

Even though Aven stood on higher ground than him and he was surrounded by a host of armed enemies ready to kill him at the slightest sign from their commander – herself – she sensed a threat emanating from his relaxed composure that she had never experienced. The Nae conducted himself as if nothing could prevent him from achieving his objective – no spear, no arrow, no blade. 

Aven gripped her blades tighter, intent on proving him wrong. 

“Yet back you came,” answered her father, “to the place of your sins.” 

Aquon nodded. “I don’t remember lifting your punishment.”

“As you can see, eternity is hard to imprison.” Cevon lifted his arms slightly to both sides, including his daughters and all the soldiers, even the whole mountain, in his gesture. “We have patience.”

Aquon smiled without joy. “I hope you have a lot more because your time here is not up. You should have left this place before I seal it shut again.” 

“You are so certain, brother. Ever so certain that your course is right.” 

“Doubt is the sign of a weak leader.” 

“Spoken as if memorized from a book. Doubt is also what keeps you alive. It is humility that prevents one from walking into enemy territory with just two companions to face a whole army.” 

Aquon didn’t even flinch at the insult. Only his voice betrayed his rising anger. “You miscalculated your strength before, brother. And it seems you still haven’t learned to fight your own battles.” 

Aven immediately saw the bait in these words. Don’t fall for it, father. 

But Cevon, already filled with the fire of hate, and his prospect of revenge so near, was not as cold-blooded as he pretended to be. Yet, he didn’t take the invitation to combat his brother alone – for now. “It was me who beat you first, as far as I can remember.” 

“With the aid of the people you had turned against me, yes. But the fight didn’t end there. It ended here, when I closed these gates before you, proving my superiority.” 

“If you need to frame it like this, I’d say the fight has not found an end yet,” said Cevon. 

“Yet here you are still”, countered Aquon, “clinging to your mountain as if it were your home and not the prison I made it to be.” 

“The mountain taught me many things. Patience, yes, and also implacable hatred. I learned to grow my strengths and prepared for centuries. We killed all of your kin here. None survived to tell their tale. None survived to hold us back.” 

“Yet here you are still,” said Aquon. 

“Because I knew you would come. And, as I hoped, you are not prepared. Just like last time.” 

Aquon raised his axes slightly, looking at them each at a time as if they were whispering to him, yearning for blood. Then he shot a look at his two companions. Only then did it occur to Aven that the Nae was her half-sister. As closely related as Nivee. 

“I remember standing against you once before while being grossly outnumbered, Cevon. And that time you ambushed me unaware. This time, I know I am up against a traitor. Don’t let numbers fool you.” 

Cevon took a step forward. Although he towered over Aquon, the enemy Nae appeared supreme enough to rule the whole scene. Aven felt her hands gripping her blades ever tighter. Her soldiers were still ready. She could kill these three intruders in the blink of an eye. 

“I will no longer suffer your blindness, Aquon. And I won’t allow you to simply take what you desire without considering the will of others.” 

“You either have the will of others imposed on yourself, or you rise above and bend the will of others to your cause. That’s why you were in this prison while I roamed the earth in freedom.” 

Cevon nodded. “You haven’t changed a bit in all these eons! You still hold to the belief that cost you your love.” 

It was the first time that Aven saw Aquon react. Her father had touched a raw nerve. Aquon’s composure stiffened slightly, and his eyes narrowed. “It was you who cost me the best thing I ever had in this life. Tell me,” he said, leaning forward as if to vanquish the distance between him and his brother, “by what witchcraft you tore her heart from mine.” 

Now it was Cevon’s turn to relax. “Is that what you still tell yourself? Sorcery? A trick?” Cevon laughed. “Indeed, brother, you have not changed in all the times you have lived. She didn’t leave you because I bewitched her. She came to me! Seeking refuge from your unbending will. Hers was a soul of liberty, untethered and independent. She carried your seed inside her, but increasingly felt suffocated by you, your plans, your character.” 

“Finally,” Aquon said, “I learn of the lies you fed her!” 

Cevon shook his head, almost sad. “If only it were so. No. I admit that she might have sought help from me because I was softer than you.”

“Surely you don’t regret ‘aiding her,’ since it brought you into her bed!” Aquon gestured with his axe, and Aven felt its blade’s tip point directly at her. 

These words caught Aven off guard and hurt more than she wanted to admit. She had always taken pride in being Ivendei’s daughter, the Nae she was never fortunate enough to meet. Being insulted for her heritage felt worse than a physical stab in the heart. 

Her father, though, let the insult glance off as if it were not an arrow but a mere stick thrown for a dog. “It was her choice. When you left to seek our companions, it was as if a great weight was lifted off her shoulders.  Fearing it may befall her again upon your return, she came to me.” 

“And so you decided to kill me and everyone else I brought back? So you could keep her for yourself!”

“I never wanted to kill you. You were my brother after all! But your return was exactly as she feared. Remember, I granted you a choice. I didn’t come with my blade in hand but with an offering of peace.” 

“Stealing the heart of the person I held most dear was hardly an offering of goodwill!”

“You were not to be reasoned with, not willing to step away, not ready to humble yourself! You wanted her no matter what she wanted! Your disrespect of her own will made you unworthy of her.” 

“You are not the one to judge my worthiness!” Aquon’s voice now resembled thunder. 

Cevon inhaled to form a response, but he was never going to give it. Ilyn moved so fast that Aven hardly registered when the knife left her outstretched arm with arrow speed. 

Aven reacted before she thought. With a scream, she jumped forward, throwing herself in front of her father, ready to take the knife – block it, take it, catch it – whatever it took. 

But the blade passed her by, never intended to hit her father. When Aven turned to follow the trajectory of the projectile, she saw Nivee stumble back and fall, her throat and chest covered in blood.