[Second Era – Year 754 of the Divinity War; Hopron, near Orgwar’s prison]

  I needed to know. I needed to puzzle together my memories, and he needed to cultivate them. He was the key. They were. So back into the memories we went, to restore ourselves.

  Moraithe clung to the bars of his cage as the morthel swelled up to consume him. His nerves had held this long. He brought the spyglass to his eye, looked into the prison fortress, and sighted his mark.

  “Now!” he screamed the order to his battalion.

  Just as a morthel reached out for Moraithe, he swapped places with his mark. Now inside the fortress, a dull ache pulsed through him, the drackmoor pain. Saffrael and the other captives were close now.

  He looked around. What was this, prison or palace? From within, the fortress walls were a riot of activity, for the walls were invisible, holding a vast menagerie. Each wall contained different climates and creatures. It seemed they had imported life from galaxies beyond count.

  Hungry cowlstalks from Orsis paced along the branches of jungle trees, their retractable heads now hidden within a series of enameled plates like glistening armor, many layered scales hid claws and rasped feet.

  A great hookfin swam inside another wall, its massive glowing barbs trailing with each surge of its tentacles as it hunted for the fingillies. Those fingillies dove behind rocks or stuck themselves onto the slinkwaifs, which spurted and dove about inside the walls.

  Nira, Saffrael’s sister, saw them and gaped “What? Those are my creations. Someone has been stealing my hookfins and fingillies.”

  Other walls contained creatures he could not name, darting through grass, skittering along sand, wallowing in swamps or crevasses.

  Curtained veils of sheer fabric, woven with the silhouettes of leaping and exuberantly dancing figures hung everywhere, most tied back, others fluttered across the corridors. Opulent cushions were piled in every nook, whether for lounging or napping he could not be sure.

  What kind of prison was this? Where were the prisoners?

  As Moraithe walked the lavish corridors, a retinue of golems awaited in alcoves to serve every need. Visions of fragrant dishes appeared in his mind, an array of mouth-watering treats, or fizzing beverages.

  Samples of dishes imposed themselves upon his mind, their scents, flavors, and textures filling his senses. It was a distraction. But those green cakes with the orange sauce, whatever they were, perhaps he could … A slit in the golem dilated open like a yawning mouth, displaying the dish he’d just mentally sampled.

  No, he truly had no time. The wardens could be mustering their strength even now.

  Other golems floated by, offering games, putting on impromptu plays, or dazzling with a wide variety of fireworks, tricks, jokes, or myriad entertainments. Samples of memories, joys, and simple pleasures flitted across his mind, begging to be indulged. An array of crystals filled with each experience were paraded before him. He waved them aside and pushed on down the corridor.

  But one small golem continued to spin annoyingly around him. Perhaps it was some sort of alarm. He snatched it out of the air, blinked, and threw it into the revenescent. Since golems had no consciousness of their own—a mere semblance of life rising from instructions to the wills that maintained the laws of nature—it would remain inert in the revenescent.

  The corridor led to a railing, overlooking a massive central hall. An invisible basin cradled a blistering fire, and within the fire, something moved.

  It couldn’t be.

  “How did they get a sparkdrifter?” Nira asked as he approached. Those were from one of Farrlad and Veniitra's worlds, for they had crafted many varieties and placed them on many of their worlds.

  “I don’t …” But he was letting his surroundings distract him. He raised his voice to call to his battalion, most of whom had gathered in that central hall. “How many wardens remain?”

  His battalion began scanning their surroundings, this time not for distractions, but for enemies. Moraithe used his spyglass, to look back to the cages, where enemy soldiers were now being consumed by morthel.

  The cages melted into slime and slag, as the bulk of the morthel flowed over the bars consuming the men to add to their undulating mass. But some of the wardens, it seemed were not immortal. They were quickly dissolved into the morthel. He watched them disintegrate, in horror at the miscalculation.

  How had he not expected mortality? How had he not planned for this? They were human, he didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths.

  No time for tears, not now, he had a mission to finish. He looked through the spyglass, this time to note how many wardens remained, twisting the ring back and forth to check the fortress at various depths.

  Saffrael and Orgwar were down there somewhere. Did Orgwar realize how perfectly he was playing the part of Throm’tor? But this time Moraithe had not blundered in alone. This was no solo rescue mission. Orgwar would never capture him as Throm’tor had.

  It was time for justice. This was a mission only he could perform. Only a drackmoor guided by the very drackmoor pain the Severed had inflicted upon them. With it, he would save them.

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  Orgwar would be one of those down there in the great hall. But which? Moraithe had ordered his companions to leave the throne room untouched. Images of another throne came unbidden … leaping desperately, clawing for the throne, him and Norgoth wrestling with Throm’tor’s will … Moraithe broke the reverie, this was no time for distractions.

  An indecipherable shout reverberated off the walls. Wolth raced into the chamber, worlds seeming to crash with each footstep. A warden chased his wake, armed with a blitz rod—a weapon of trapped emotions—which was spraying shards of pain, fear, and confusion. Wolth bolted for the railing, above the basin of fire, but he didn’t turn aside, instead he leaped from the railing right toward the fire. Midair he turned, spyglass in hand, to look at his enemy, a cheer of victory in his throat.

  “They’re mortal,” Moraithe shouted.

  But it was too late. Uncle Wolth had already swapped places with the warden, whose blitz rod now shot emotion shards into the basin of fire as it swallowed him. The warden’s brief scream was followed by an echoing thunder of silence.

  Moraithe looked at Wolth with horror on his face. “What have you done? How much death does it take to break the soul covenant?”

  “This is war. Death is to be expected. It won’t corrupt my soul to rescue someone.”

  But they had trained for this, to push aside the emotions until the battle had ended. It was necessary with such attacks as despair bombs, emotion shards, and blitz rods.

  He pulled the beacon from the revenescent, or he attempted to, the little golem he’d tossed in came alive and charged at his face, he dove around it, snatched the beacon, closed the revenescent, and struck the beacon to call his companions.

  They were assembling now, there at the basin of fire, in preparation for the final push into what appeared to be a throne room. Why does it have to be another throne room?

  The pain intensified as he drew nearer to Saffrael and the others. How would he bear it when he finally found her? How would she? Perhaps that was the very reason she’d been avoiding him. All those times he could have pulled her through the revenescent, saved her, if she would have let him. But she’d hidden, avoided him.

  Saffrael’s sisters lined up at his shoulders.

  With a peek into his spyglass, Moraithe checked on Ryvern’s progress with the petrification bomb. Something was wrong. Ryvern struggled, wresting one of his men to the ground, then swapping places with another. A traitor? More than one? Something was happening.

  “Wait here,” he commanded his battalion.

  He aimed his spyglass at the man who had made the second attempt on Ryvern, and swapped places. The palace vanished, and water engulfed his knees beneath a tangle of trees.

  There in the western wilds, the trees were knitted together over the water in a nearly impassible snarl of root and branch. He climbed up out of the water and onto the roots of one of the trees, then opened the revenescent by blinking one eye, just one, to keep his other eye on the true world. Otherwise, all the tables and shelves would block his surrounding view. Something bumped into the back of his head, the little golem he’d tossed in. It would not relent. Moraithe entangled only the floor, just below his feet, and closed the revenescent before the golem could get another run at him.

  Saffrael’s floor had saved him from so many troubles, traps, and pitfalls. But even at this height above the water, still some of the roots spread as if intent on tripping him. Where was Ryvern?

  “Ryvern,” Moraithe called. He turned just then to see him, partially obscured by a tree. Ryvern stepped up onto Saffrael’s floor his mustache mysteriously as magnificent as ever, despite the plummet through icy wind, and other dangers.

  “They remember everything,” Ryvern shouted. “From before the Amnesia Storm, what happened to my world, to everyone we knew back then.”

  A dire sense of alarm seized Moraithe’s throat. “You’ve been listening to the Severed Lords? You can’t trust them. They only want to take away your power.”

  “No, they have given me power!” Ryvern’s stare flared with enough intensity to peg a man to the wall. “They have made me recall great powers from an era unremembered.”

  “It is a trick. They only hope you will corrupt yourself, and lose it all when the Amnesia Storms come again.”

  “There never was and never will be more than one Amnesia Storm, and it has passed.” Ryvern rushed forward, closer, closer.

  “So you’ve lost faith in the prophecies.” Moraithe held up the spyglass and backed away. “Ryvern, don’t do it. Whatever they want you to do, don’t do it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let them do it,” Ryvern said, his tone more subdued that normal.

  “How can you allow the Severed to possess you so casually? Elithir can help you remember too, and he won’t lie to you or enslave you.” Moraithe’s heart was breaking at such a betrayal by one of his oldest and dearest friends. “Please, Ryvern.”

  But it was not Ryvern who answered. “Ryvern has given me leave to do this bit,” the voice was Ryvern’s, but the manner of the voice, the accent, and drawling inflection was that of another—someone he remembered, another betrayer who had died long ago.

  “Soljiin? Is that you, my old friend?”

  “Oh, yes, friends,” the Severed Lord’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Friends who will not share power.”

  “You were not ready.”

  “Seventeen thousand suns and I was not ready. Well, now it is my turn. Try to untangle this.”

  Moraithe did not wait to discover his plans, he glanced at the roots below them and then revoked the floor. They fell, he and Ryvern, or Soljiin, as he now was. Moraithe managed to grasp a trunk and land on the roots. But Soljiin fell sideways, struck a branch, grunted, and spun away into the water.

  That ought to have broken his concentration enough to break any entanglement.

  But Soljiin looked up from the water with a gloating smile.

  Moraithe looked down to see the petrification bomb stuck to him. It had been prepared to entangle all morthel. But attached to him it would entangle all people, if not all life itself. Everyone would be petrified.

  His first impulse was to fling it at Ryvern, but he was no fool. The trees? But petrifying them would lay waste to worlds uncounted.

  His mind raced. He could leave it in the revenescent. What if Saffrael found it before he could use it on a morthel? It would destroy her, destroy them all.

  Morthel were a twisted form of golem. Remembering where he’d left the pesky golem, he blinked open the revenescent and reached out to catch it, but it was gone. How? He turned to find a young brunette girl standing there, in Saffrael’s revenescent, the golem rebounding off her shoulder.

  The stranger girl gasped before she vanished.

  The note he’d found, How did you get into my revenescent? No. Impossible. Who was she? This was Saffrael’s revenescent, he knew it … my revenescent. Who was that? How was he opening the wrong girl’s revenescent? It suddenly felt so wrong to be there. Intruding on a stranger’s most sacred and intimate space.

  The golem turned on him. He caught it. The petrification bomb, he remembered, as he closed the stranger’s revenescent. The clay of the golem softened, twisted, and stretched to escape. He stuck the petrification bomb into it and pulled away just as it went off. The golem transmuted into stone in his hands.

  Every morthel would be petrified, but so would any golem. In his desperation, he had just brought an end to an era. Now who would serve the people? Who would do all the menial chores? Who would clean, mend, harvest, cook, and build? Who would offer them simple pleasures, distractions, and entertainments?