[First Era (War Year 3)]

  

[A Memory Within a Memory (War Year 0)]

  Answers? Elithir’s words echoed like the voice of a thousand winds.

  Moraithe glanced at Saffrael and Norgoth, and then back to Elithir. He nodded. Elithir placed a hand on his shoulder. His presence seemed to stretch across the very fabric of reality, and suddenly they were elsewhere.

  He looked around, confused. He had heard stories of the Infinite—of beings with unimaginable power—but standing before Elithir, a being whose mere presence made the very air feel charged, he understood what it meant to be insignificant.

  Under the dim sunlight, the land here seemed to pulsate, mountains rising and sinking, rock and soil blending and parting as if the earth was caught in an eternal dance of transformation. The ground beneath them shifted as if the earth itself was breathing, rising and falling in slow, deliberate motions. From deep below, Moraithe heard the earth groan, an unsettling lullaby of something immense and restless.

  Moraithe turned to Elithir, eyes wide, seeking some sense of familiarity. “Where—what is this place?”

  “An inconvenient world for a conversation,” Elithir answered, his tone cool but cutting. “But a necessary one. Look at it.” He waved a hand at the swirling landscape—jagged mountain peaks pierced the sky seemingly at random. Lava flowed in streams and rivulets across the valleys. “This is a world in flux. Rising, falling, shifting, changing—just like you.”

  Moraithe staggered as the ground buckled beneath him, and a great fissure cracked open nearby, spilling molten light. The earth rumbled like a warning, but Elithir’s gaze was unyielding. “You will learn,” he said softly. “Your life is changing. If you survive, you may reshape this place, just as it will reshape you.”

  He turned to Elithir, his mind still reeling, frustration seeping through his voice. “You brought me here for answers, didn’t you?” Moraithe’s throat tightened, his voice cracked with the weight of the question, the exhaustion, the uncertainty. “To tell me how I lost everything I was before. How I became less than nothing.”

  The ground beneath them rumbled, the earth shifting in subtle waves as if the world itself were trying to swallow his anger whole.

  Elithir moved closer, the weight of his presence pressing down on Moraithe like gravity. He raised a hand, the air crackling with his infinite presence, and gestured at the shifting land beneath them. “To live is to change. Life is chaos.” He swept a hand outward, and Moraithe followed his gaze. The distant peaks shuddered, sinking like dying giants, only for new ridges to claw their way from the earth.

  Moraithe stood frozen, his mind whirling. “Why is this world … shifting like it’s on the brink of collapse?”

  Elithir paused for a moment, his voice dropping like he was reliving something he wished could stay buried. “Mithsyrium.”

  Moraithe blinked, the word landing like a stone. “What’s … mithsyrium?”

  “Elusive, volatile. A substance like a force of nature.” Elithir’s tone grew more intense, his words flowing faster now. “It was born out of the very war you … or rather we started. That and experimenting with power—untested, reckless power.”

  Moraithe’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t interrupt. His mind was spinning, trying to catch up.

  “This world was already torn apart before the fighting, but both sides desired what this place contained. So, they created weapons—advanced, dangerous. But they weren’t just weapons. They could reshape reality itself. But you can’t control forces like that. Not when you don’t even understand them. Not when you’re too eager to wield them.”

  Moraithe felt the weight of those words press on him. “So, what? They … triggered this?”

  Elithir nodded, his expression darkening. “Exactly. When the weapons—when they collided—it wasn’t just rage or fire. It was chaos itself that was unleashed. The mithsyrium was born from the collision, and with it, everything changed. The fabric of reality—what we thought we knew—began to melt. Mithsyrium was born, and the land itself became unstable.”

  Elithir continued, “Now this world is shaped by mithsyrium, a substance which melds matter together. As it drinks in matter, stacking it together, melding it into one, it grows so dense it causes the world to shift and sink. But as it sinks it grows warm, heat causes it to release what it has taken, only to rise again. Because of this cycle, nothing stays the same. It is beautiful in its chaos … and dangerous.”

  Moraithe’s chest tightened, the pieces finally starting to fall into place. “So it’s like this world’s been in a state of flux ever since then? The world itself is fighting to stabilize, but it can’t. It’s in a constant battle against itself?”

  Elithir met his gaze with an intensity that made Moraithe feel like the ground itself was watching him. “Because the source of it all—the mithsyrium—is too chaotic. Just like your memories. Just like your power. Both of them—fractured, shifting. But you’re not the only one in flux, Moraithe. The war you started… you merely triggered it. It was already waiting. Ever since those souls let the will to dominate others fill their hearts this devastation was always going to happen.”

  Moraithe stood there, staring at the ever-shifting land, the pieces of his life, and the world, still broken and shifting like a thousand untold secrets. And for the first time, he understood the magnitude of what he was up against. Not just the war. All the souls in the universe were like the mithsyrium, bound together in a constant, never-ending dance of chaos and change.

  He looked up at the stars, at the dying sun, a burnt yellow. His mouth fell open in shock, he recognized it. He knew this world. This was the ruins of Throm’tor’s world. “You said the war came here? That they desired something it contained?” Moraithe leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “Why would anyone fight over Throm'tor’s ruin?” he asked, his voice sharp, disbelief threading through his words.

  Elithir, ever calm, took his time before responding. His tone was slow, deliberate, but there was a slight edge to it, as though he’d been anticipating the question. “Because, apparently, the wreckage of his throne might still hold a certain power.”

  Moraithe ran a hand through his hair, a skeptical laugh escaping him. “Power?” he repeated as if the word itself were strange. “How? The ones who powered it—the Severed who made it work—they’re the very ones we’re fighting.”

  Elithir’s gaze softened with a hint of amusement. “Not power for us,” he said, voice quick, cutting through the confusion. “Power for them. The Severed. For them, it’s not about what’s there. It’s about what used to be there. The history of an object. The memories it holds. And the greater the history, the weightier the power.” He paused letting his words settle in the air. “What could be greater than the fragments of the Throne of Souls?”

  Moraithe stood silent, trying to wrap his mind around it. The idea felt like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit, the edges sharp and jarring. “So the Severed take their power out of time itself?”

  “Not so much out of time, but out of an object’s history.” Elithir stepped back, brow furrowing as if unsure how to explain. “The Severed cannot perform entanglement or hold a revenescent, their powers are all knotted up inside their hatred. But we’ll talk about that more later. I came here to answer your questions. Particularly why you have so much gratitude shielding you.”

  Moraithe’s gaze fixed on him, waiting in rapt attention.

  Elithir’s voice carried the weight of eons, each word deliberate and measured, as though preparing to unravel a secret that spanned lifetimes. “Our minds have always existed. In some form or other, we have always been thinking entities, aware of our own existence. But none of us, not a single one, knew anything beyond ourselves. We were unaware of matter, of energy, even of one another. There was only us.” He paused, allowing the silence to stretch, like a deep breath taken in the dark. “And then you came.”

  Moraithe’s brow furrowed, but Elithir continued, his voice now softer, as if tracing the outline of a distant memory. “It was you who woke us all. With your presence, we began to understand—slowly at first—this new world, this world beyond ourselves. As we scrambled to make sense of it, you traveled onward, waking more and more of us. Again and again. On and on, until I believe you had woken nearly every living soul.”

  Elithir’s gaze shifted to the horizon as if seeing something only he could perceive. “And that is why, Moraithe, you hold our gratitude. A deeper, greater well of gratitude than anyone else could ever comprehend. You gave us awareness of each other—a gift so vast that none could fathom its true worth.”

  He turned back to Moraithe, his voice growing more introspective. “But it wasn’t until much later, long after we’d uncovered the laws of matter and space, long after we had learned to use entanglement and revenescent, and even to craft these bodies we now inhabit, that you decided to finish your work.”

  “When I reached out for another soul to foster, you were there.” There was a slight pause before Elithir spoke again, the next words falling slowly, like stones sinking into the depths of an ocean. “I didn’t recognize you at first. But it didn’t take long to realize who you were. And that’s when I became your father.”

  His eyes softened, an almost imperceptible change in the way he looked at Moraithe. “I taught you all that we had learned over those endless eons. I taught you how to craft your body. As you grew it, your mother kept its elements safe in her revenescent. And then you began to grow strong, to understand.”

  Elithir’s expression darkened. “Until Throm’tor captured you.”

  Moraithe’s heart skipped, the name like a sharp knife twisting inside him.

  “You were on a mission, a rescue mission, you know,” Elithir continued, his voice hardening. “You were going to save Saffrael, whom Throm’tor had kidnapped and hidden away, stashed in a place so secret that no one thought it possible to find. But you found it—his secret world, buried deep in a revenescent.” Elithir's eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “You sought my advice, gathered your courage, and you plunged in. And that is when he found you.”

  Moraithe could hear the weight in Elithir's voice, the gravity of the moment when Throm’tor, hidden away in his own darkness, learned his secret was revealed. “He was stronger than anyone had imagined,” Elithir went on, his words now like stones being dropped into an abyss. “He’d crafted that throne for himself, made it from the souls of those who sought power. Power to rule, to dominate. And there, in his forge, he enslaved you. He meant to use you to finish his throne, to solidify his will until no one could deny him.”

  Elithir’s voice grew lower, darker still. “That was his goal. To make everyone bow to his will. Most particularly to see your mother and I grovel before him.”

  Moraithe reeled. Each word seemed to cut deeper, revealing things he hadn’t known or hadn’t fully understood. His mind buzzed with fragments of memories, some sharp, others distant, but none quite whole. “I sort of remember some of that…”

  Elithir’s gaze softened, and he nodded, though the sympathy in his eyes didn’t soften the gravity of his next words. “When you lost your memories, you lost your self-assurance. And that is what amplifies all your power. Especially entanglements.” He paused, letting the words hang in the air, a silent weight between them. “We used to call it confidence, but that’s easily confused with pride or bravado. Those don’t bring power. No, self-assurance comes from knowledge, from experience. And those can't be faked or inflated. That’s why, when your mind was shattered, you didn’t just lose your memory. You lost your power as well.”

  Moraithe stared at him for a long moment, considering the fierce displays of power he’d so recently seen. “During the battle, I heard them talking about lords and barons. What does that mean? How do you know how powerful someone is?”

  Elithir didn’t answer immediately, his eyes distant as though pulling the answer from the depths of forgotten time. “Just as we measure gratitude by units, so we know how much to pay, we measure self-assurance in the same way,” he said, his voice steady, almost mechanical. “And that is how you know someone's power.” The way Elithir spoke about it—so casually—left Moraithe feeling small, insignificant.

  “How powerful was this baron who killed so many of the defenders?”

  Elithir gave a small, thoughtful hum, then nodded as if to himself. “Ranks are calculated based on self-assurance,” he said. “You have to understand that these ranks were created rather organically as people began to divide out levels of power. After the first few each was slowly added over the ages. The first rank, a soldier starts at seven hundred and goes until fifteen hundred when they reach captain. They become a master at three thousand, a knight at nine thousand, a general at twenty thousand, and a lord at forty-five thousand” He paused for a moment, his eyes glinting with a knowing look. “The rank of baron is reached at a hundred thousand, and … well, you get the picture.”

  Moraithe blinked, his mind struggling to process its sheer magnitude.

  “How much self-assurance do I have?”

  “At present, you have fourteen.”

  “Oh.” Worse than he expected. “How long does it take to get that much power?” Moraithe asked, almost incredulous.

  Elithir looked at him, considering the question. “Everyone is different,” he said. “But on average, self-assurance can be gained at a rate of about ten units per year, as time is reckoned on the first star.”

  Moraithe ran his fingers through his hair, disbelief creeping into his voice. “So … it’ll take me sixty-nine years just to reach the level of soldier?”

  Elithir’s expression softened, but his next words carried a weight that only grew heavier. “It would, yes. But you once had far more power than you do now. You were a prince, Moraithe. A prince, with a self-assurance of around twelve million.” He met Moraithe’s eyes. “And if you regain even a fraction of your memory, a sliver of that power would likely return to you.”

  Moraithe clenched his fists. “Twelve million?” His laugh was bitter. “I can barely time the entanglement on an arrow. How am I supposed to reach that again?”

  “If you are determined to do it it will be inevitable, the only question is how long it will take.”

  Moraithe felt his heart race at the thought, a glimmer of the strength he’d once had flickering in the dark corners of his mind. He looked up at Elithir, the enormity of his next question weighing on him. “So… just how powerful are you?”

  Elithir’s gaze never wavered. “I am an Infinite,” he said simply, the word carrying a finality, a weight all its own. “My self-assurance is approximately fifty-seven-billion.”

  Moraithe’s eyes widened. “What of Throm’tor?”

  Elithir’s expression shifted for just a moment, a shadow passing over his face. “Before he fell, Throm’tor had around twenty-three-billion.”

  Moraithe’s mind struggled to process everything. “So gratitude doesn’t have levels like that?” he asked, suddenly unsure of how to even frame the world around him.

  “No,” Elithir replied, shaking his head. “Gratitude is your wealth. It’s measured, but there are no ranks, no titles. Though a shield of around two thousand gratitude is recommended for a soldier going into battle.”

  “And how much do I have?” Moraithe asked, his voice low, a little wary now that the scope of his situation had fully settled over him.

  Elithir’s lips quirked slightly as he raised a hand to Moraithe’s forehead, his brow furrowing. “Let me see if I can calculate it,” he muttered, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he concentrated. “Ah, it seems you currently have over fifty-two quadrillion units of gratitude. To be exact… 52,158,443,634,576,437.”

  Moraithe’s eyes went wide. “Uh… woah,” he breathed, the weight of that number nearly knocking him off his feet. “What can I do with that?”

  Elithir gave him a pointed look. “You could buy everything that exists if you wanted. But the Severed don’t care much for ownership. They take what they want. You could, however, invest in training. And when you’re ready, when you have the strength, you could outfit your own armies. Field forces greater than even mine.”

  Moraithe’s shoulders slumped. He hadn’t even begun to understand the extent of his power, let alone how to use it. “It’ll be some time before I’m ready for that.”

  Elithir’s gaze softened. “Perhaps not as long as you think. I’ve never found your lost memories. They were likely fragmented, left behind somewhere around here where you lost them.” He paused, his hands moving gently to Moraithe’s head. “But there is a shattered memory still within you. Let me see if I can piece it together for you. Perhaps it will restore a sliver of your old strength.”

  Moraithe’s heart pounded in his chest, a nervous fluttering he couldn’t control. This was it. This was the moment. Would he regain some of the power he once had? Would he be able to rise again?

  The reality faded as the memory came rushing in …

  Slowly, the nameless man had raised a cold and steady hand pushing back his white silk hood. Brushing aside the robe, he clasped the stiletto at his belt, drawing it slowly from its sheath. He knelt and raised the blade above the expressionless man lying willingly on the floor before the throne. Reality scraped across the back of his mind intensifying into an unnerving shriek, and he shuddered.

  Dazzling hues of sunlight cascaded through the vaulted crystalline windows lining the temple hall. The elaborate arches rang with deep and alluring voices, chorusing in a rapturous hum.

  The vast expanse of the temple hall was suffused with a luminous glow in the light which skipped from stone to stone. His eyes cast about, the merest glance spoke of ages consumed in forming a single elaborately worked pillar. Each was hewn into twin-winged serpents, their tails coiled and bodies intertwined as they rose up from the floor. The serpents spiraled upward until back to back with heads held majestically, their wings unfurled, meeting the wings of their brothers, and spreading out to form the peaked domes which loomed over the magnificent hall. They stretched out in a broad, sweeping array, an endless sea of pillars, each similar but unique, vaulting up to dizzying heights. Every detail down to the tiniest scale or the sharpest talon carved and polished so finely as to make even a Dazzler gape in awe. Though in that place even the Dazzlers, weaving their wondrous tales, had long been wrung from all memory.

  “Plunge the stiletto deep, soak the blade in his flesh!” The nameless man recoiled in pain as the cry rang in his ears, echoing in his mind, trampling his thoughts and pounding at his will as if it would rupture. Yet through the deafening noise, a still, calm whisper came into his mind that even the thunderous roar could not drown out. He knew the voice and it spoke to him. The grasp on his mind lifted. He had been freed for a reason, and time was running out.

  The whisper formed words in his mind, little more than a trace but more powerful than all the thunders of the earth. Only you can save us before the shackles bind us all eternally. It was a familiar voice resonating with power and wisdom, he knew that voice, knew it as surely as he breathed, but he could not recall the name of the voice that called to him.

  The nameless man stared back and forth between the stiletto and the familiar figure lying before him—so familiar. He was supposed to do something, but what?

  A blaring roar scraped across the back of his mind, relentlessly intensifying into an unnerving shriek. He recoiled in pain as once again the cry rang in his mind, nearly breaking through the only coherent thoughts he could hold.

  The stiletto fell from his fingers and clattered to the stone floor beside the prostrated man, its blade clean. He clawed fingers into his scalp until the screams subsided. Something was wrong. Why am I here? He stared in frustration at the dagger on the stone floor. Though the howling had ceased, the sense of desperation prodded his thoughts past the stiletto, past wondering at the familiar figure lying before him. But his thoughts turned upward, with his gaze, to the wondrous throne before which he knelt.

  Its smooth sheen glimmered in a way that no amount of polishing could achieve; a throne wrought, rather than hewn, from stone. The forms of three enchantresses clothed in gossamer robes formed the throne. Huddled together, their skirts were being swept away by the wind, the first embracing it, the others fighting it. The flow of windswept robes and long, sweeping tresses formed the seat. Each strand of hair had been molded with seemingly impossible delicacy. With her back to the wind, the wings of one swept out protectively as if staving off the wind, the others swept back to catch it. Every vein in every feather had been molded into the stone. All skin and muscles flowed naturally. Circlets of flowers crowned each brow. Their eyes were framed by delicate lashes, and their lips looked soft and supple as no stone had ever seemed. Yet despite its beauty, a pain and darkness imbued the throne, as if suffering festered within the very stone.

  But the throne itself lay empty. Why do I bow before an empty throne? Eyes darted back to the stiletto and the figure lying at the base of the throne breathing slowly.

  Throm'tor struck him with his scathe lash, and the whisper faded. But an instant later the whisper surged, mingled with a fierce sense of urgency, a sense of desperation longing to be released. Bracing his swimming head his fingers dug painfully into his scalp until, at last, the dissonance subsided.

  Memories surged back, screaming through his mind like an overwhelming flood, hungry to consume him. And he finally remembered, he was Moraithe, and just a moment ago he had been standing upon another world. The memory came flooding back …

  Upon that other world, moonlight had glazed over the flitting leaves and trickled across the windswept fields quelling his misgivings.

  Pressing his eyes closed he drank the clean scent of the meadows, the feathered touch of the cool wind tracing swirls across his skin, the serene music of the night drifting from the shadow of the woods. He let it fill him, pushing out the sense of the dread which threatened to seize him like iron. It was like the great breath before he leaped.

  “You are certain I can do this?”

  Elithir clapped hands to his shoulders. “Be prepared for him to take your mind. It was he who first discovered bewitchment. He has always been enamored with it.”

  Moraithe’s eyes widened. “But it was forbidden by the council from the beginning.”

  “You’ve seen what he did to Saffrael. I would not have asked this of you,” Elithir’s gentle, rumbling voice washed over him like soothing balm, “but he has always been wary of me. He does not know your strength, he is blind to it.”

  “He knows I am no match for him.”

  Elithir caught him by the arm. “No, you cannot match his power nor his cunning. He has crafted darker and stranger works than the throne itself, but none more powerful. At all costs, he must not gain the throne or we are all doomed as his slaves and puppets for endless time. Hold to your course, keep the plan, only then can you hope to save her. Only then can you hope to save us all.”

  “You truly believe I can do this?

  “Of course.” Elithir released his arm and clapped him on the back. “You carry all our hope.”

  Moraithe nodded slowly and with a deep breath. The universe stretched and he vanished into another world, Throm’tor’s world.

  Air erupted around him like jagged shards of ice threatening to rip deep fissures into his skin.

  Staggering, his feet hammered against the stone floor jarring his bones and resounding throughout the ancient stone hall. But he’d come to the wrong place. The shrieks, clanking of chains, and sizzle of searing flesh were absent. The bloodstained world he had imagined, gone. Rather he found himself gaping as his senses flooded with beauty.

  Swirled runes danced across the floor of the vast chamber like metallic veins, seeming to have been born with the stone, so seamless was its silvered inlay. The ancient words focused, radiating glory from the throne which lorded in splendor over the temple. The scent of sweet spices lingered upon the air. Wafts still drifted from unnaturally beaming servants who bore golden platters—heaping with assorted banquets of fresh sweet breads, spiced delicacies, and savory morsels—past glaze-eyed laborers.

  He stood at Throm’tor’s back. Yes, he had come to the right place.

  Then he saw it, it stood majestically before him radiating intense power, its beauty shrouding the hint of misery festering beneath its surface. The Throne of Souls! Gasping, he stifled the white-hot need to throw himself in a frenzy toward it. Careful, if he suspects … He stuffed the thought hastily into the back of his mind as Throm’tor spun to face him.

  He knows! How could he know? Elithir protect me!

  “Ah, Moraithe, welcome,” Throm’tor dipped his brow in the merest nod, eyes locked on him in a knowing gaze.

  Ice surged through Moraithe’s veins. He struggled to steady his voice. “You have broken our trust and ensnared these pure souls with your wretched—your forbidden craft. The Council commands that you relinquish your power,” but his voice fell weak and tremulous. The plan, hold to the plan. He can’t know. It is only his arrogance.

  “The Council commands?” Throm’tor snickered. “And so the council has come with this great host of souls,” he gestured at the emptiness around him then pointed at Moraithe’s chest. “One weak and fragile man from a dead council, who cannot let go.” He strode forward fluidly, poked at Moraithe's body curiously, and snorted. “Crafted this yourself have you?” Without warning a whip, the infamous scathe lash wrapped around Moraithe. “You will enjoy serving me. You are just in time to finish the throne. I think I’ll have you sacrifice its creator to it.”

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  “No!” Moraithe’s senses flickered. Elithir, save me! Elithir … The glint of silver caught his eye as a familiar man beside the throne tucked a sheathed stiletto into his belt. He was so familiar.

  Take the shiny blade. The searing desires burned through his thoughts shredding his plan into vapors, nothing else mattered. He couldn’t remember who he was or what he was doing.

  The familiar man lay down at his feet.

  With the hushed rustling of silk, Moraithe’s hand plunged into the loose robes grazing the pommel of the stiletto secured at his belt. His fingers slipped over the grip, clasped it tightly, and drew it carefully from its sheathe, offering only a whispered ring of steel. Sinuous etchings adorned the blade and a flawless crystal orb capped its hilt. Some inimitable force compelled him to kneel before the prostrate man. The stiletto, he wanted to see how keen its blade was, he had to see how easily it could cut …

  He came out of the rush of memory gasping for air like a drowning man, and he cast his eyes about the chamber laid out before him.

  No time for wondering, he stood fitfully kicking the stiletto behind him. Hurry! I must hurry! … To do what?! he snapped at himself in frustration. Again the scream shrieked in his mind, pounding in white hot need with its incessant rhythm, and this time he understood the words. Take the throne now! There is no time!

  As Moraithe gawked, sudden pain lanced through the back of his neck from icy fingers, shredding his skin. Throm’tor’s claws tore at him, forcing him to his feet. Another hand wrenched at his shoulder. He spun about to face Throm’tor, whose blazing eyes flared with hatred.

  Tendrils of pain dug deep into him and Moraithe writhed in shrieking torment. Flames twirled about him blistering his raw skin. His muscles knotted and contorted as spidery arcs of blue lightning splintered through his flesh, relentless and unyielding. Deafening shrieks split his throat in unearthly pain. Thought, memory, identity all crumpled as Throm’tor attacked his mind. Bracing his swimming head through the pain, his fingertips dug painfully into his scalp. Finally, he crumbled to the stone floor in a wrung-out heap as the last of his raw-throated cries echoed from the temple walls.

  Abrupt as lightning, a blinding flash of light burnt through the temple. With blinding intensity, it focused behind Throm'tor.

  He spun to face the figure who had appeared amid the endless light, which vanished as quickly as it had dawned. Moraithe fought to lift his head and blinked through the flash of light now burnt into his eyes, struggling to see through the washed-out hues. He has come. But even as the thought came to him he was unsure of who had come or why. There was something so familiar about the being who had arrived amid the light, a vague memory of speaking with him skittered across the surface of his thoughts.

  “Elithir, my old friend,” Throm'tor's sneer was anything but friendly. “So it is you who has been meddling in my affairs. This is not your place, return to your own.”

  “You have made it my place!” Elithir thundered. “Do you think me blind enough to hide your true intentions from my sight? I see through your thoughts, I know your plans. I know you seek to make a puppet even of my mind.”

  “You see my thoughts? Then you too dabble in the powers of the mind.” Throm’tor foamed. “No more, holy lectures—”

  “Seeing into a mind is very different from bewitching it.”

  “But you have always controlled the minds of others,” Throm'tor laughed, “with your tricks and persuasion.”

  “You seek to blind their minds and bind their souls. You seek to rule over them. I teach them to rule themselves. I offer knowledge and power. Only when they know the truth shall they be free.”

  In that instant Elithir’s eyes flickered to Moraithe to meet his gaze and suddenly words formed in his mind. Quickly, I cannot distract him for much longer. Moraithe scrambled desperately at the words. He had to do something, but what? With his mind scrambled as it was he could not remember.

  “They cannot rule themselves,” Throm’tor spat, “you have proven that with your teeming worlds. Mine is a world of order, peace, and beauty. Your worlds are filled with chaos and destruction.”

  “Resistance yields growth. But you don’t want that. You keep them stunted.”

  As he stumbled about Moraithe's eyes lighted upon the stiletto lying upon the floor. Should I finish it now? If only he could put the stiletto to Throm'tor’s flesh. He scurried across the floor.

  Suddenly, Elithir’s eyes found him once more as he fumbled for the stiletto. NO! The throne, you must get to the throne! He spun in desperation as the words hit with more force than he could believe.

  Drawn by the commotion behind him Throm'tor whipped about.

  In a swirl of white, silk robes Moraithe threw himself at the throne, over the man lying at his feet. Throm’tor lashed out for him with his scathe lash, his tool of bewitching. Some unseen force caught the lash, turning it away. Throm’tor spun about to face Elithir once more.

  Moraithe hit the throne and scrambled to turn and sit on it. He stared in astonishment as the figure at his feet climbed up the throne and brushed in beside him, the one he now remembered as Norgoth, his ancient friend.

  “You made the throne to have power over even the Infinites now you shall taste of that power,” Elithir roared.

  In rage and hatred, Throm’tor lashed out with a blast of power deep enough to shake the earth. But in that instant Elithir vanished in a blinding flash of light and was gone.

  Throm’tor clenched his hand and the glyph embedded there began to spin and burn with an incandescent glow. That glyph, it must be a law stone, the power that created and maintained the very laws of nature for this world. Throm’tor raised his hand to the sky and power burst forth sealing the world ominously.

  Moraithe had the sinking feeling that they were alone, completely cut off from the aid of Elithir or any other for that matter. Throm’tor turned to them with a death glare and they shrunk into the throne, trembling.

  “You think holding my throne will save you.” He pulled a crystal from his robes and inserted it into a staff. “You are ten billion years too inexperienced to match me.” He pointed the staff at them, and the crystal exploded. Pure entropy rammed into his mind, shattering his thoughts, his memories. He clutched onto this moment as all the other memories fell away in the blast. When it ended he knew little more than who he was and what he was now doing.

  This was the throne of souls, imbued with unmatched power to control both mind and body, far greater power than that which now besieged them. In a fit of desperation, he clawed wildly at the power of the throne. But his friend Norgoth calmly filled himself with the power and threw up a shield to protect them. Effortlessly, the shield billowed forth across the land to guard all souls from Throm’tor’s power.

  All throughout the grand hall men and women awakened from their labors as from a nightmare. They remembered all they had suffered through the millennia, and they turned to Throm’tor with a rage that could not be measured. For ten thousand years Throm'tor had controlled them, mind and body, with his scathe lash, like puppets dancing to his will.

  He had forced Norgoth to craft the throne and had caused them to sacrifice thousands of souls into it to imbue it with the power which it now held. Power that none could match. Power that could make even the Infinites dance upon his puppet strings forever. Moraithe’s heart thrashed in pain for the souls lost to this throne. But he would use it to pull Throm'tor down with all his tyranny.

  Throm’tor shivered with molten rage, shoulders tensing and hooked claws glinting hungrily from the soft pads of his fingertips.

  Behind the shield Moraithe followed his friend's lead, only he fashioned his power into a lash even greater than Throm’tor’s.

  In rage Throm'tor shouted and the earth shuddered and quaked from the depths, it would respond to his command. In fear Moraithe struck, silencing him with a lash from the throne.

  Binding him, he considered what he could cause Throm’tor to do. Perhaps make him destroy himself.

  Throm’tor laughed. But why? Even bound he was dangerous, too dangerous. He had too many tricks and he understood this power more deeply than anyone. Throm’tor was the master here, bound or not. He tried to ignore Throm’tor’s triumphant gaze. Throm'tor had lost. He should not look triumphant.

  Throm’tor laughed once again. “This glyph holds all the laws of this world, and it is entangled with my very soul. Only by breaking my soul could you stop me, and that would lead to the death of all. Surely you would not destroy the world just to save it from me?”

  Of course, Throm’tor would have entangled the laws of nature in this place. How could he have been so blind? What was he to do? Already Throm’tor was devising a plan, he could see it in his eyes. They had to figure something out before he did. Until they had a plan he was like a caged rage-rake, and they were locked in the cage with him.

  Oh, if only Saffrael were here, she was the wisest person he knew besides Elithir himself. He may have lost nearly all his memories, but he could not forget her.

  Using the throne his gaze pierced the walls to stare at those out on the fields of wind-raked hedge lilies, through forests of tall, majestic trees, and even through the earth to those beyond the mountains.

  He searched among the inhabitants of the world who seemed like children awakened from a nightmare. They fell to the earth trembling and weeping bitterly, pouring out tears for the suffering of endless lifetimes of wounds which they had felt but been unable to shed. The fits of tears consumed every soul, tears for the wasted years of pain, held inside. The pressure of tears uncried burst forth in a maelstrom. They let the tears flow desperately, cleansing them of what had been, as if without it they could never be whole again.

  Even upon the throne Moraithe and his companion felt the surge of overwhelming sorrow. The mourning for the lives these souls had been forced to live. Meaningless and empty lives, devoid of love and feeling. They despised what they had been forced to become, they despised it all.

  At last, he found her in the meadows nearby. He remembered how to call to her without a voice. “Oh, Saffrael, I need you.”

  “Then come walk with me in the meadow.”

  “I cannot leave this place, though I yearn for it with all my soul.”

  “Then I shall come to you.”

  “Please hurry.”

  She broke into a desperate gait. Running until pain surged through her lungs, stabbed into her sides, and burnt through her limbs. Oh how he longed to run to meet her, but he was bound to the throne until Throm'tor had been brought to justice.

  As he awaited their reunion he turned back to Throm'tor, who remained bound by his lash but looked somehow more dangerous than ever. He must have a plan. But what was he waiting for? It was he who had taken Saffrael, who had denied him the sight of her sweet face or the sound of her silvery voice. He would be brought to justice for it, as he would for the suffering of this whole world.

  Moraithe began considering any possible way to bring Throm’tor to justice as his gaze shifted about. Polishing rags discarded in heaps upon the floor, and golden platters, now spilled upon the stone in a spattering of finely seasoned and garnished courses, lay discarded by deliverance. The tears began to slow, a rumble of reunions filled the hall and the air rang with sudden laughter, some hesitating, others almost desperate.

  Outside the temple, children ran together playing, their lack of experience in games made up in eagerness. Girls gathered in knots chatting and giggling as naturally as a rose blooms in the sunlight. Others merely breathed slow, deliberate breaths; the air smelled somehow fresh and clean.

  Slowly, clouds gathered, the rolling churn of silver and gray blanketing the heavens, sprinkling rain as if its meager drizzle could wash away the pain of the earth itself, the pain of ten thousand years. Laughing and prancing men and women ran from the beautifully adorned bakeries, workshops, and night havens which dotted the land between mountains, forests, and vast, cascading waterscapes; out into the open where they skipped through the gathering rain. There they gathered under the dripping sky, opening their arms and raising their eyes toward the heavens exultantly.

  Running his fingers along the glassy arm of the throne Moraithe marveled at the detail hammered into the stone. The throne pulsed beneath his fingertips. He could feel the life beneath its surface.

  Without warning the glyph in Throm’tor’s hand flared as crippling pain exploded like thorny vines, knotting up and tearing wildly deep inside of him. And he realized too late what Throm’tor had been waiting for, for his thoughts to drift as they had and his grip to weaken. Shrieking, he fell writhing from the throne. Horror flooded through his ringing senses.

  Throm’tor suddenly lashed out with his scathe lash just as Norgoth found himself unprotected. In shock and surprise, Norgoth threw out a lash of power from the throne. Wielding it fitfully, desperately.

  Throm’tor countered the power calmly and deftly. Then unexpectedly their lashes locked, tangling themselves together. Both reared back, jerking at their powers. But Norgoth, though unskilled, had the power of the throne, with a wrenching tug he rooted the scathe lash from Throm’tor’s very soul, scarring his mind in a way that could never be repaired or healed.

  Throm’tor screamed with inhuman pain. Such a soul wound was permanent, he would never be able to control another soul with the scathe lash, not even in death. But he was still more powerful and dangerous than anyone cared to imagine.

  As Throm’tor twisted about in pain, Moraithe’s terror released him. And with all the strength he could muster, he groaned to his knees and clawed his way back into the throne.

  There was no longer any need to shield them from his scathe lash now that it had been rooted out. As Throm’tor recovered from his loss, Moraithe gripped him in the power of the throne. He would feel all of what he had done. He would suffer the full weight of justice.

  Moraithe forced him to turn his own fear and hate upon himself. His glyph flared once more. Throm'tor writhed and contorted, shrieking like death itself, and as he trembled in pain, the earth began to shake as if it shared his pain. Finally, the storm ceased. Trembling, he crawled back to his knees, tears streaming down his rage-stricken face.

  Then, startlingly, his mask of fury split into a wicked smile. “Yes. Feel the power, the absolute power. Control me, make me your slave, your puppet.” He spat blood at their feet as he paused. “Already you are beginning to feel the power consume you. Yield to it, let it fill you with lust for more. Join me and we shall rule all. We shall make thrones and take all souls that all shall bow to us forever!” he roared in exultation.

  In sickened disgust, Moraithe pushed away the power, unable to bear such a thought. “You seek to make us as yourself, you maggot. You cannot worm your way into our hearts this time.”

  Throm’tor grimaced in anger. The spot of blood he’d spit on the floor bulged and shivered, swelling and crackling until it formed into a great beast with many rows of sharp teeth. The beast roared and lunged to attack them. Together Moraithe and Norgoth reached out for its will only to find that it had no will at all. Throm’tor, it was controlled by Throm’tor. As the jaws closed about Norgoth, Moraithe snatched Throm’tor’s mind, stopping the beast.

  Then he turned the beast back upon its master. Let Throm'tor feel those teeth tear into him, let him feel the sting of justice.

  But as the beast turned, Norgoth snatched his arm urgently. “No, wait.” The beast paused. Releasing his arm, Norgoth turned to Throm'tor. “What is this beast?”

  Throm’tor remained silent.

  “What is it!” Norgoth roared as he gripped the throne about him and forced the truth from his lips.

  “It is a shield. Once it consumes me even you could not reach my mind to control it. Surely you did not think me fool enough not to learn to protect myself from my own power?”

  “Enough! Destroy it,” Norgoth commanded.

  Like vapors of mist, the beast evaporated and blew away.

  Throm'tor cared for nothing but himself. He would only continue scheming until he saw all people suffer with every pain he could inflict forever. Who knew what cunning device Throm’tor would employ to regain the throne next? His scarred mind could still use the throne even if his scathe lash was gone forever. He had too many tricks, and they had nearly fallen already. Every moment they faced him they risked it all. He had to be destroyed, though he knew the sacrifice it would require and his heart strained at the weight of it.

  Just then, Saffrael burst into the room. Their eyes locked, speaking volumes. Her soft lips parted to speak.

  Throm’tor lashed out at her with a bolt so bright that it tore into Saffrael’s heart, bursting her chest, gushing sizzling blood before she toppled into a lifeless heap.

  Moraithe’s heart screamed within him, a tortured, shrieking agony. His chest seemed to burst in time with hers, a throbbing of unbearable pain deep within the blistering char that was his broken heart. With all his strength, he clung to the throne to keep himself from falling to the earth and writhing along with the bystanders who’d been caught in the blast.

  With burning tears streaming down his face, he locked the power so tightly upon Throm’tor that he could neither move, nor breathe, nor even think without Moraithe allowing it. Then he prepared himself to give the command that would be his last.

  Smearing the tears across his cheeks, he looked around himself into the faces of those he had just saved, silently dooming them. They were his friends, his brothers and sisters. There was no way they could know the weight he felt. The burden of all their souls. The crushing weight of the decision overwhelmed him to the point of dragging him under. This was bigger than his life. It was more than all of their lives. But how could he bear to witness their deaths after Saffrael? How could he stand to slay them, even to save them?

  He could feel Norgoth beside him, his thoughts, his pain, as deep as his own. They knew that Throm’tor must never get a hold of that power, no one must.

  One thought was all that kept him from slipping away in the pain of it all. One promise was all that could redeem him. I swear I will repay your deaths. Perhaps the thought had come from Norgoth, though he could not be certain with their minds linked so tightly as they were. He spoke the words softly, a whisper in the minds of all who cared to listen. I will see you reborn. I will see you to glory. I will guard you from tyranny forever more, I swear it!

  Then with a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes, he knew what he must do. Pushing past the lump he forced the words out, and together they gave the command that would doom them all.

  Their anguished voices rose as one. “Throm’tor, we mete justice upon you this day. Break the glyph and yield it to us.”

  He snarled and gnashed his teeth in response to the command.

  Moraithe’s will tightened around him like an iron vise. He had bound so many before, crushed their thoughts, reshaped their very identities… and now it was happening to him.

  “No,” he snarled, struggling against the force pressing him to his knees. “I am the master here! I—”

  His body obeyed a will that was not his own. Moraithe forced him to reach for the glyph, to rip it from his own flesh, to destroy himself. A fate he had inflicted on countless others.

  As his fingers moved against his own will, his laughter turned to a rasping breath of disbelief. “So … this is what it feels like …”

  Fighting every motion his claws flared from his fingertips, and he tore into his right hand digging out the glyph. Rending bloodless flesh, his hand was shredded into a mess of pale filleted gore. He tore deeply with the snapping of hollow veins, ligament, and sinew, baring bones, splintering them, and tearing them away at the joints to get to the glyph—red with an incandescent glow like blazing iron from the forge. With harsh curses, he tore the glyph free.

  “Break it,” they commanded as one.

  Disregarding his useless carnage of a hand Throm’tor clenched the glyph in his snarling teeth, and prying with his good hand snapped it in half.

  As the glyph cracked, Throm’tor’s sneer faltered. His fingers trembled, clutching at the broken fragments as if he could piece them back together.

  “No… I control this world! I built it!” His voice, once thundering with power, cracked into something small—something almost human.

  But the laws of reality no longer bent for him. The ground beneath him swallowed his words, and as his body dissolved into nothing, his final, ragged whisper carried on the wind.

  “Nothing can stop me…” And he was utterly destroyed, body and soul.

  Suddenly the earth reeled and shook in a violent wave of stone and earth, heaving as in the throes of death, tossing them all like sailors in a storm. They braced themselves against the quake, though many stumbled to the floor. Golden platters rolled and clattered. Some of those nearby slipped upon the food spattered and smeared upon the floor, falling splayed out upon the stone.

  With the last of their strength, Moraithe and Norgoth turned the throne upon itself and tore it asunder. Thousands of raving souls screamed forth, blazing with a rage that burnt them to the bone, incinerating their flesh with an anger this world had never before known. A rage even Elithir would scarcely have stood against.

  The earth shuddered more violently, rolling in waves, stone heaved and splintered, the world over. The temple trembled, but its walls held strong. Across the sweeping landscape, writhing bodies tumbled through the air howling in pain as shafts of splintering stone burst through the ground and tossed them like worn-out polishing rags.

  The temple lurched to the side. With charred limbs, Moraithe tumbled from the broken throne, flailing for purchase on something, anything. His hand caught Norgoth’s robes. Norgoth shouted as his arm slipped from the sleeve and he gripped the throne, wrapping the stone form of the enchantress about the waist, with his other arm he reached for Moraithe. But a body tumbled past knocking Moraithe away.

  He slid into the throng of flailing bodies. A cloud of severed souls from the throne surged toward him, blazing with a rage that blackened his flesh, curling his limbs into uselessness.

  The dead and dying littered the temple floor. The severed souls snatched upon those bodies, fueling and animating them with their anger.

  Lesions blanched from his skin and his blood streaked the stone as he struggled for purchase on the ever-shifting scape. He slid past Saffrael’s limp and mangled form and he grasped her to him with all of his strength.

  With a tremendous blast, the world cracked and shattered, laying bare the incandescent glow of molten earth-blood between the fissures.

  The living dead swarmed him with their anger. Blasting and clawing in marrow-deep lesions, bursting his skin. A cacophony of tortured screams rent the now hazy air, as molten rock blazed across the land. It was the last gasp of the world, spewing the last of its glowing, red lifeblood in a final blinding flash.

  Moraithe gasped as he recalled his death. His breath hitched as his vision swam, the blinding chaos of memory giving way to the dim, shifting light of the present. His hands trembled, still feeling the phantom weight of Saffrael’s lifeless body in his arms. The ground beneath him was level—but for a moment, he had been falling.

  He exhaled shakily, forcing his hands to unclench. “That … that was real.”

  Elithir’s voice cut through the haze. “You remember now.”

  “All those souls Throm’tor had trapped were unleashed.”

  Elithir nodded. “After eons of enslavement and torture. They seek only to inflict on men what they have suffered.”

  “And so the war began.” He looked up at Elithir. “That’s why I have to stop the Severed. I released them. It’s my fault. So I’ll become strong enough to stop them.” He struggled to hold back tears. “But I am so weak. I nearly died, but gratitude healed me, and I found Norgoth and Saffrael’s bodies and healed them with it.”

  Elithir patted his back, gently. “There is no growth without resistance.”

  “You said that before.”

  “And it’s as true now as ever.” He lifted a hand toward Moraithe as if feeling the heat coming off of him. “Would you care to know?”

  “What?”

  “Your self-assurance has risen considerably. You measured fourteen before. Now it is seven thousand four hundred and thirty-two. You blew right past soldier and captain ranks and now measure well into the rank of master.”

  Moraithe turned to Elithir, stunned. “Where can I get more of those memories?”

  “I suspect fragments of them were scattered here upon the ruin of Throm’tor’s world.”

  Moraithe looked across the tumultuous land. “Yet even with your power, you can’t find them?”

  “They are your memories. They do not resonate with me. But if you train here, perhaps you will stumble across some fragments.”

  The land shuddered again, the earth beneath them groaning as if to prove a point. Moraithe stood tall, trembling but resolute, the weight of Elithir’s words grounding him. “I will find a way. This is my war to end. I’ll get strong enough to shatter them all, as I shattered Throm’tor.”

  “A bold dream. But will you have time?” The land beneath their feet began to sputter, but Elithir brushed it aside with a wave of his hand. “While you grow they are enacting their own plans, some of which could spell the end of all you or I know. Some could even set us all back to little more than we were in the beginning, minds who know of nothing but ourselves.”

  “If I gave you all my gratitude you could stand against them. You could break them.”

  “My path takes me another way. We all get to choose. Else what is the purpose of our core selves, our minds?”

  “Then what is your plan?”

  Elithir laughed. “Oh, how refreshing. I have told no one yet, but I intend to entangle myself across all time, unto the end of eternity.”

  “And you call me bold.”

  Elithir chuckled. “It would be nice to see your progress in action. Why don’t you show us the power of your entanglements now.”

  Moraithe nocked an arrow. But as he did he realized that the runic key he’d entangled to a bolder had now expanded far beyond the bolder, to encompass a considerable swath of land. He drew the bow and fired. His timing with the entanglement was perfect. The arrow blasted into the side of a nearby mountain causing it to topple and spew forth a spout of lava.

  “Woah! Did you see that?”

  Elithir only chortled and clapped him on the back.