*Nathlan*

  He returned to a world of wind and peace.

  It scythed through the tree above, setting branches to creaking and aching as great boughs flexed, and leaves to rustling as they wriggled in the stirring breeze. Emerald light bathed his face, as if he stood in the dappled shade of the scraggly forests that clung to the cliffs near his homeland.

  He felt a moment of vertigo as he realised he was not there, was not 14 years old and optimistic about a bright academic career, that he was instead in the midst of a pitched battle where the threat of death hung over not just himself but his friends and companions as well.

  That thought, while terrifying, was in some ways a balm to his confused spirit. Nathlan had friends and companions. Not teachers, tutors, mentors or the like assigned to him due to his station. Not acquaintances that he tolerated for their utility, but true friends. People he would fight for.

  But where were they? He returned to consciousness to find the world much changed. Jorge was slapping Sadrianna’s face trying to bring her back to the present as the World Tree’s seed finally finished its ravaging of her soul, but he looked diminished. Desperate.

  Lamb and Jacyntha were nowhere to be found, and Vera was gone too. The rebels on the walls were fighting somebody below, but even as he watched they scurried over the walls and leapt at the enemy below, leaving their superior positions for gods knew what reason.

  Not that the walls were in much shape currently. Crumbling, entire sections fallen away, they looked like they wouldn’t stand up to a light breeze, let alone the furious wind that howled through the branches above. And when he looked up…

  Nathlan saw a canopy crown the sky itself, the night sky afire with a million points of burnished gold twinkling through the great branches above his head. He remembered one of those fiery comets detaching itself from the heavens and rocketing towards him, and then remembered the changes he had undergone and the heavy decision he had made.

  He had said goodbye to war. No longer would he seek truth at the edge of a blade, and instead he had dedicated himself to creating a new generation of ward-crafters to save the Leviathan Coast from itself, and the coming apocalypse. None of that explained the giant tree that reared its trunk above all and clutched Castle Ryonic in its ligneous grip though.

  “Jorge, what…?” he started to ask, but the man’s face whipped towards him so fast he was worried his head would detach from his shoulders.

  “Nathlan! Lad, they’re out there!” the old man said, his words tripping over themselves as they left his mouth.

  “Who-”

  Before Nathlan could complete the question, Jorge was flinging a hand at the walls. “Vera! Lamb and Jacyntha went after her! There’s a 4th tier there and a whole damned company of fuckin’ robed zealots that are gonna cleave ‘em to pieces! We have to…we have to-”

  Jorge trailed off, running out of steam as his breath abandoned him, and he sagged to the ground, coughing like one of the few retches that made their way to Ship’s harbour from the Desolate Empire. Stricken with palsy or the Shivers, they all struggled to hold an action for more than a few moments without succumbing to the coughing of a recently drowned man. To see Jorge in that position, unconsciously associated as a symbol of power to Nathlan, jarred him.

  Sadrianna came around in the next moment, catching his eye and then looking around and up. He watched her take in the situation within a few deliberate breaths, and then turn her attention to him.

  “The others left the walls in a desperate charge to save Vera, from what I can gather. Something is wrong with Jorge, though.”

  “And the tree?” she asked, raising a delicate eyebrow.

  “Fuck knows,” he replied simply, and she smirked at his cursing. It was strange to hear him speak such, and no doubt went some way to impressing on her the urgency of the situation. Although, the three-hundred-foot-tall tree clutching their fortress in its grasp might also deserve some credit too.

  Sadrianna hesitated. “I gave up most of my combat focused skills. I will not be as much help out there as I should.”

  He noticed that she didn’t hesitate to stride towards the gap in the wall in front where the gate had used to be though. He matched her, rolling his shoulders and loosening his blade in its sheath. He was in a similar position, though he had some advantages over the barbarian woman.

  Namely, he wasn’t starting from scratch with a new class. He was already familiar with ward-crafting, after all. They picked up speed, running towards the steep bark surface leading down to the field below as Nathlan traced arcane sigils in the air as he ran, and a barely visible sheen shimmered around his frame as his old projectile defence ward armoured him once more.

  Skills were a crutch that he had relied on far too much recently. People were complex, and hewing the truth from the lies that sheathed them was something he had needed the system’s help with. Discerning the intricacies of the world’s magical skein, though? No, Nathlan understand the fundamental truths of the world without any need for outside assistance.

  He didn’t need the system’s guidance to form wards of power, nor to manipulate the magical weave that eddied throughout the world. He had done it since a child, and knew that he could do it again now as naturally as breathing.

  His current class boasted skills related to teaching, to visualising and showing others the underlying structure of magic, and to imparting affinities and knowledge with much greater speed and precision. The passive ones also helped refine and direct his own impressive understanding of the arcane, particularly as it pertained to wards and pre-set magical structures.

  It did not take more than a few breaths for Nathlan to spin together a weave of pure magic, the ward enshrining both him and Sadrianna, and the limping form of Jorge who had followed them unsteadily, and cushioning them all within as they fell through the air.

  Twenty meters at least passed in a blur before they depressed the mud below, leaving an imprint of a giant circle, replete with unidentifiable runes and patterns ringing it. Sadrianna and Nathlan burst forwards in a sprint, their enhanced bodies pushing them well beyond what should be possible for middling 2nd tiers.

  Nathlan’s blade flashed out as he ducked through and around wheeling horses and men, tasting blood on its naked surface, no skills marring the steel-bright sheen of it. Sadrianna was at his shoulder, her shield a silent guardian deflecting any errant attacks that drew near, and her short spear flicking out in retribution, crowned in the one combat skill she had kept with her new class, even as they passed through the confusion.

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  The once-great Crimson Company were much diminished, desertion halving their number after first Lamb’s skill, and then the giant tree’s appearance, had broken their initial charge and put the castle beyond their reach. Then Lamb and Jacyntha had carved a bloody swarth through their ranks on the way through.

  Fandar’s rebels were even now leaping around and through the confused horse-riders as Nathlan and Sadrianna slipped by, and the mercenary company was now no more than a loose collection of terrified warriors, uncertain of their purpose and bereft of leadership. It was a known truth that cavalry were made to move. The moment they were stationary, they became simply bigger targets, and often lacked the agility and manoeuvrability of foot soldiers when moving as a unit.

  Nathlan saw none of this, enmeshed within the chaos as he was, but when he and the barbarian at his side slipped through the outer circle of riders and sped across open ground towards the milling mass of soldiers ahead, they knew they had escaped.

  They spearheaded a line of rushing fighters; black-clad rebels leaping after them as they aimed for their leader beyond the white-robed company of men, members of the Crimson Company who decided to flee with their lives, if not their dignity, and behind it all, a lone figure limping through a storm of violence with little more than conviction and a single broken spear.

  *The Shepherd*

  Jorge ached. Every joint swollen and every breath a rattling gasp. Each muscle seemed to spasm out of time with all others, and he felt feverish – hot and cold sweeping over him in alternate attempts to stop his progress.

  He kept moving though, leaning on the haft of the weapon he had salvaged from the melee upon landing at the base of the tree behind Nathlan. He’d barely made it into range of the lad’s spell, but he had pushed with all his might. Impressive, for the lad to be capable of casting free-form magic at a time like this, after so long divorced from the class and profession of his birth.

  Not much of a surprise though, all things considered. When he’d found the lad, he’d known. Not just the burning pain inside him that needed excising as one lances a cancerous boil, but also the talent that lay beneath the surface. Nathlan was a special young man, after all. As were all The Shepherd took under his wing.

  A soldier, shield dripping with red and gold livery and horse bedecked in armour as fine as any one was likely to see this side of the Dragon-Spines, rounded on him. He snorted, knowing himself to be an easy target; barely able to stand, spirit empty of the power to change things, and weapon broken in his shaky hands. A tempting target for the humiliated soldier looking to vent their frustration on someone.

  He stumbled aside, his body barely able to follow the commands he gave it, but it was enough to spare him from the biting cut of the lance as the soldier thundered past. He thought about retaliating, tracing the trajectory in his mind that his spear would have to take for the broken, jagged end to slip above the soldier’s embossed gorget.

  Wasn’t worth the effort. Jorge re-focused on his goal, seeing his charges, his apprentices, streak away towards the semi-circle of soldiers that even now tightened like a noose around his old friend. Vera battled valiantly, slicing through magical bonds visible to his eye, disrupting spells and blocking off avenues of attack even as the Inquisitor manipulated the battlefield to her advantage.

  Jorge cursed his body but could not hate his own choices. Had he not acted and called forth the Shadow of Illyn, the youngsters would not be here now to risk their life in defence of Vera, however misguided it might be. Perhaps he should have trusted Lamb, stayed back and met the charge with spear in hand only after they broke through the man’s earthen manifestation…but it was a hollow hope, and relied on information he wasn’t privy to at the time.

  No, the skill had been the only play. He had had no spirit left for any other working that could change the tide of battle, and his sacrifice had ensured the Crimson Company would never breach the castle. That had been the lynchpin of their strategy, after all; hold out long enough for all to see the coming apocalypse and force them to choose between a costly battle abroad or flee back to salvage what would be left of their homes.

  It had been a successful gambit, he knew. As he looked to the open field, watching men and women even now fleeing the empty plains that had been salted so long ago into a barren wasteland, he tried to take solace in that success. They had won. Vera had had her vengeance, the people of the Western Marchlands would not suffer the wrath of an undying tyrant bolstered by ancient secrets and power, and the world was turning on its axis once more.

  But he also saw his students charging towards an army and knew that none of that mattered. If Vera died here, he would grieve. But they had both expected this would end in death for one or both of them. Jorge had resigned himself to death a hundred times over the many years, and as each slipped past, he grew more content, eager even, with the thought of succumbing to father time’s beckoning call. Vera was looking for absolution, and he knew the search for purpose after this would be difficult to face. Death seemed preferable to many who led the lives that he and Vera did.

  But Lamb and Jacyntha had things to live for. Nathlan and Sadrianna should not face the great leveller’s hard stare just yet, and especially in support of another’s vengeance. Or a mentor’s life. His was a life of service and atonement, of purpose found through the raising of a new generation to bear a torch that he had been found ill-suited for. Unworthy of.

  For them to die in his place was a travesty, and he had lived for far too long to allow it.

  Another soldier came leering from his left, thick sword raised high and seeping potent magic. He stumbled forwards on his next step, but this time it was calculated. The jagged spear haft was darting out even as he slipped past the attack, slow as a sloth, steady as a line of marching ants, and inevitable as the first rays of dawn. Blood flowed as surprise transformed the cruel face of a man into the truth beneath; that of a scared boy.

  He hobbled on, leaving the man to bleed out in his wake. One among a thousand. Each step an effort of will, each strike of haft on mud a promise to the world that he would see fulfilled. Step, squelch, step, squelch.

  He watched as Nathlan demonstrated an achingly beautiful understanding of the sub-structure of creation, a ward dozens of meters in diameter settling around the soldiers he and Sadrianna sprinted towards. They turned, weapons raised and faces set in determination, but then slowed. His two pupils closed the distance in moments, and then were among the soldiers, weapons weaving a stunning defence as the soldiers fought with fervour in their slowed state.

  A ward to slow the enemy, while Nathlan and Sadrianna moved through it, themselves unaffected…not just the caster, but his ally as well? Across a moving surface, affecting only the enemies and not the terrain or magical sub-structure itself? Even Jorge had to admit that he’d not seen its like from a 2nd tier before.

  But then Illyn Solynia had spoken, and her blessings always heralded change. Jorge could only hope he had prepared the young man sufficiently to create something worthy of the potential he now had. It was his firm opinion that everyone had a dream. It shifted and changed, but always there was a dream behind their eyes that they sought to make real.

  He didn’t know Nathlan’s dream, nor Lamb’s or Jacyntha’s. Sadrianna’s was in many ways obvious, but people could always surprise one, and Jorge still wanted to know.

  He hobbled on, determined to see it with his own eyes. The two had carved and slipped their way through the ranks of men, and were now running into the empty field beyond, Nathlan swerving out wide and Sadrianna running directly to where Lamb and Jacyntha were frozen in place. The Inquisitor had no doubt seen them, but Jorge was halfway towards the dwindling company by then, and hope began to bloom in his heart.

  The rebels streamed towards the soldiers, the first of them hitting the line of warriors with a crash of steel and screams. This was no siege, with cautious exchanging of attacks and walls to hide behind. This was a brutal melee, with soldiers pressed against one another and blades and skills flying free. Blood fountained, people died, and below it all, the mud slowly turned from brown to a dull red.

  Through it all, Jorge limped forwards. There was one mistake he would never repeat, one lesson that regret had taught him. Markas had ripped open that ancient wound, but he had never been at risk of forgetting its benefactor. Never again would he leave an ally to fend for themselves.

  Never again would he let another sway his charges, whether by temptation or violence. He had given up on the world once, and Illyn Solynia had restored hope to his heart. He would return the favour to those he had sheltered, and whether it killed him or not, he would see them witness a new dawn.

  The broken spear clutched in one gnarled hand thudded into the earth with each step, and The Shepherd walked ever onwards.