I felt the presence of the World Tree staining the aura that boomed throughout the cavern. It pulsed out with each slow step of boot on stone, and I recognised the unmistakable feeling of the Subakir within.

  I let out a relieved sob. There was only one person that it could be, and I almost laughed in relief as I heard Jorge approach. He was moving surprisingly slowly, steps sounding almost unhurried, but I assumed he must be looking around for Varice.

  I hadn’t seen her do so, but it wasn’t a stretch to guess that she’d slipped away into that strange skill she had that could part reality so smoothly. I cleared my throat and spoke up from my position in front of the ruined building.

  “She’s hiding…in some sort of…skill,” I gasped out through the pain still wracking my body. “Can appear from anywhere,” I groaned.

  Rather than approach though, the steps stopped. I frowned in confusion after a few moments without further sound. Fighting through the pain and the ringing in my head from unacknowledged system notifications, I managed to lift my head and squint into the gloom.

  Jorge had his back to me, standing still and facing the open cavern. I couldn’t make out any details and coughed once more. “What are you doing, Jorge? I need-”

  I didn’t finish, trailing off as Jorge shot out a hand to one side. It disappeared a foot or so out from his body, and then he stepped back and withdrew the arm with force, turning the movement into a throw. Varice followed, tumbling through the now gaping hole in the gloom, the purple seam folding back together like a double-curtain closing to obscure the extra-planar space it had held.

  Varice stumbled to her feet, hands raised and already working on a cast. Her purple raven shot out towards Jorge, but he swayed aside as if it was moving in slow motion and reached out a lazy hand to grab the creature as it flew past. He held it up to his face, examining it for one moment, before he turned back to Varice and crushed the creature in one hand like one would scrunch up a piece of parchment.

  She gasped like she’d been punched in the liver and fell to one knee as he slowly walked towards her. There was no concern in his posture, no care in his stride and most disturbingly no sense of urgency at all. I felt a seed of doubt begin to sprout in my belly as the figure strolled up to Varice and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Where is the God-Touched?” he asked in an even tone, and I frowned once more in confusion. I didn’t recognise the voice.

  Perhaps it was the ringing in my head and the damage to my ears that Varice’s disabling spell had caused, or perhaps Jorge simply sounded different when he was no longer holding something back. This might be the true face of The Shepherd when he wasn’t pretending to be a cheery old man.

  I had wondered, back after my capture by the Lions that first time, if Jorge was simply pretending to be human, but I’d decided at some point in our travels since then that it wasn’t the case, that the man I knew was the true Jorge. I started to doubt it now, hearing the strange voice echo from the figure shrouded in darkness, and the thought made me shiver.

  Varice looked petrified, and pointed over at me. “He’s…He’s there. Please, I was following orders, I didn’t kno-” she began to babble, but she cut off with a gasp of pain.

  I couldn’t see the details, but she seemed to try and crumple inward around her shoulder, as if the man was squeezing it and she wanted to alleviate the pressure. “No,” the stranger corrected her. “The other one.”

  Varice gasped again, chancing a glance up, while I frowned at his statement. Whatever she saw in his face made her cringe away and she quickly spoke once more.

  “Which? There are three – all in the barracks,” she said, pointing with her free hand at the building behind me, now partially caved in and only standing due to the support from inside the cages.

  “The one you idiots took from the Leviathan Coast. Goes by the name of Jason,” he replied, and Varice bobbed her head frantically.

  “Yes, he’s in there! I can show you, let me help you unlock-” she began but was interrupted once more.

  “There is no need. Thank you for your services,” the figure replied, and then Varice screamed as her body gave way beneath the strength of his grip. He seemed to simply squeeze, and his hand went through her. He pulled his closed fist from inside the hole where her chest met her shoulder, and shook his hand out, flicking viscera and bone to the ground.

  Then he turned and strolled over to me before squatting down and reaching out to cup my chin, turning my head this way and that. I felt blood smear across my lips and cringed away, but his grip was iron.

  “And who are you, I wonder?” he asked, seemingly to himself. “Something about you feels…familiar.”

  The stranger sniffed. “Not a scent I have smelt in many, many years….” His strange serpent eyes met my own, and I felt my breath catch. “You smell like Subakir.”

  I looked into the weathered face of the man, and knew for sure that I’d been mistaken. This was not Jorge. This was a stranger I had not met before, and his power was frightening to behold. What was worse though, was the complete lack of empathy I saw in those strange eyes.

  Cold. Empty. Flat like a shark’s, this man looked through me rather than at me, and I was given the distinct impression that he would happily kill me simply for causing him the inconvenience of stepping around me.

  “I’m God-Touched,” I coughed. “Kidnapped by the duke’s men. Just came down here today. I tried to fight my way free, but-”

  I paused as the stranger raised a hand. “It doesn’t matter. Do you know of a man named Jason?” he asked, and I was hit with the premonition that if I said no, he’d kill me as he had Varice, whether or not I was involved, or if the action would help him in any real way. This was a man for whom life meant so little that I simply didn’t count as significant enough to bother with.

  I hesitated, trying to think of something that could buy me time, but he saw the truth in my face. “A shame,” he sighed. “Still, no witnesses” he said, and I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth in the face of my death.

  Then we both froze as something crashed into the ground nearby.

  I felt the vicelike grip of the stranger leave my face as he stood slowly and turned to take in the figure rising from a crouch, the obsidian below showing spiderweb cracks from the hard landing. The stranger’s aura flared, and I felt the blood freeze in my veins as my heart struggled in vain against the overwhelming pressure. My vision started to darken at the edges, but even through the confusion I saw Jorge rise from his crouch.

  He was dressed for war, his fist clutching a spear and a small shield of rough iron-banded wood on the other arm. His strange layered leather armour was gleaming in the darkness, and he looked uncommonly serious, even if the moment did seem to call for it. Something was different though.

  The normal joviality and calmness he projected now gone, the deep gulleys of his face emphasised by the shadows. His eyes met my own though, and I felt hope flare in my chest as I recognised the man I knew within them. His aura reached out like a warm summer’s breeze, carrying the scent of spring leaves, and my blood began to flow once more, the black spots in my vision retreating.

  I gasped in a breath as I watched the confrontation. And it clearly was a confrontation. The two men stood across from one another, and I felt worry for Jorge for the first time. The stranger was physically imposing, and though he carried no weapon and wore only a heavy cloak over what looked like normal trousers and a shirt, his aura was domineering.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The power that rolled off him was palpable, but I should have trusted in my companion. His own aura rose to match it, and I felt my eyes widen as a second 4th tier warrior unveiled themselves in this ruin.

  The stranger felt like a weary veteran, but Jorge eclipsed the weight of that aura within moments. Time itself seemed to shadow him, and I felt like I was seeing the truth of history peeled back before my eyes. There was something crushing about the weight of it. The sheer quantity of experience, the gulf of sensation and the vastness of knowledge that was contained within that aura was shocking.

  Aeonic.

  The word occurred to me in a vacuum, but it felt appropriate as I watched the two strangers stare at one another. For this was no longer the Jorge I knew, either. He might not have the cruel indifference of the stranger that had been only moments from snapping my neck, but this Jorge had a weight to him. A significance that I’d never before borne witness to in my short time in this world.

  Silence dripped between them, and in that void hung an eternity of enmity.

  “Why are you here, Shepherd?” the stranger asked, and Jorge didn’t answer.

  “Are you willing to let things lie as they are?” Jorge asked. “I still remember your parting words.”

  A laugh then, as the stranger’s shoulders shook softly. “I warned you that you would never forget my oath. Are you ready to accept your judgement?”

  “I’ll not hear of judgement from an oath breaker,” Jorge replied, a dangerous edge to his voice. “You can bark like a dog as often as you like, but the only oath I’ll hold you to is your first, Markas. Why are you here?”

  The stranger stared a few moments longer before shrugging. “Same as you it seems. I’m here to retrieve a fool that found himself stolen.” He glanced back at me for a moment, and I once more felt my body lockup when those serpentine eyes met my own.

  “God-Touched seem as prone to misplacement in the Sunsets as they are to making friends in high places,” he said with a twist of his lips. “The younger kingdoms have forgotten the lessons they should well know.”

  Jorge didn’t share his smile though. “I will not stop you. There is no need for our quarrel to resolve itself today. Take your man and go.”

  The stranger sighed wearily. “Alas, I am contracted by The Desolate Empire in this. The First Spider was clear; no witnesses.”

  Quick as a flash, his hand flicked out and a dagger flew towards me. It moved so fast I had no time to react, even my mana unable to respond before the blade was at my face. And there it stayed, hovering in place, embedded within some invisible barrier that had sprung up around me at the last moment.

  “You will not win this, Markas. You do not yet have the strength, just as you did not then.”

  Jorge’s statement seemed to anger the man, and he snarled as he turned towards me. Vertically slitted pupils bored into my soul, and I felt pain wend its way around my core. I had no time to truly understand the situation, but End Of The Hunt bloomed to life once more, siphoning mana from my core and desperately trying to protect my soul from whatever effect the stranger was having on me.

  Despite the danger, I could not look away, and I could feel myself slipping, my hold on the world itself beginning to lose its tether. There was a sound like a wave crashing into stone cliffs, and I saw Jorge lowering his fist, the stranger skidding to the ground a few meters away. It had happened so fast that somehow I had missed the movement and only heard the sound afterwards.

  The stranger – Markas, Jorge had called him – rose to his feet languidly. He widened his terrifying eyes in a macabre imitation of shock, and cracked his neck from either side.

  “You would lose everything for one fool of a boy?” he asked, but Jorge shook his head.

  “How bitter you’ve become, lad-”

  “DON’T CALL ME THAT!” Markas screamed, shocking both Jorge and myself, though I was rapidly losing what semblance of consciousness I still had.

  “Don’t you fucking dare try that ‘nurturing old man’ shit! I know what you are, Shepherd, and I know how empty your compassion truly is. Is he seeded? Or do you plan to recruit him to your cause, hmm?”

  Markas’s words were bitter as the north wind, laced with a biting hatred that had festered over many years. No new squabble could produce such raging emotion, and I began to put together a picture of what the relationship between these two was.

  “Do you plan on making yet another young fool dance to your twisted tune? Convince him that he can change things, and spend his life watching everything fall apart anyway?”

  Jorge sighed, and while the sound was weary, his stance lost none of its wariness as he circled around to stand between me and the stranger.

  “You lost your way Markas, don’t put that on me.” Jorge drummed his spear haft on the smooth slabs of obsidian beneath in time with each point he made. “You joined the Blackguard. You broke your oath. It was your pursuit of easy results that ruined you. I warned you against the Anticipant Chamber.”

  As Jorge spoke, some of the weariness began to drop from his posture, shoulders rising from their resigned stoop. He began to pace back and forth as he spoke, and I could see the passion and frustration leaking through from beneath whatever mask of calm he had layered over his wounded heart.

  “Accelerationism has no precedent, Markas. How many times did I say those words to you?”

  The stranger snarled in response. “Fuck precedent! She sits there and does NOTHING! Then every few hundred years she just upends the fucking board, and plunges all of us into death and despair! Is that your god, Shepherd? Is that your wise and compassionate ruler?”

  Jorge didn’t back down either though, and I began to realise I was still not anywhere approaching safety. I started to crawl backwards, slowly, but the first time I placed my injured arm down, white pain flashed through my skull and blinded me momentarily. By the time I came to again, Jorge and Markas were in each other’s faces, words thrown back and forth like weapons meant to cut.

  “Time and time again I tried to caution your rashness. It’s not about righting a thing yourself, it never has been! How could you miss that lesson, even now?” Jorge asked.

  “I fix things, Jorge!” was the response from Markas as he paced as well. They circled each other like feral cats around a dump. “I go out and do the hard work. The bloody work. I actually make a difference in this world, while you sit back just like her, head in the sky and thinking you’re superior while the rest of us drown in the mud! Do you have any idea how many children I’ve shepherded to The Verdent Grove? How many evil men and women I’ve taken revenge on!? You think it just goes away because some-”

  Jorge scoffed in response as I heaved my body backwards on my one good arm. My weapons lay on the floor behind him but that wasn’t a concern – I could call them to me at any time, after all.

  “You’re a glorified mercenary Markas. Listen to yourself! The Anticipant Chamber lead you astray, just as I warned you they would. You work for the spiders now! You were going to kill my lad because some bureaucrat wanted no witnesses to their failure? What madness is this?”

  “It is the way of the world!” the stranger retorted. “Why I should expect you to understand I cannot say, but that is how things are..."

  “It is the height of folly, ya fuckin’ mongrel,” Jorge growled, and I blinked in surprise. Even the stranger seemed shocked, his animal pupils widening before slitting nearly closed, brows furrowed in anger.

  Jorge wasn’t finished though. “No witnesses!? No fuckin’ witnesses, lad?” he asked in exasperation, and I noted that Markas didn’t so much as flinch at the term of endearment this time, seemingly waiting to see what Jorge would say next. Jorge began to pace once more, tapping the base of his spear into the ground once again in a rhythmic cadence.

  “The whole of the Riverlands is burnin’ because o’ that fucking boy,” Jorge pointed at the barracks. “And you have the cheek to think they’ll be no fucking witnesses if you kill a few 2nd tiers?”

  Markas frowned, seeming unsure now, his aggressive posture somewhat shrinking for a moment. “What are you talking about?” he asked cautiously.

  “Come on, lad! I know yer not that fuckin’ daft!” Jorge proclaimed, his heavy accent becoming even more accentuated as the man riled him up. “There’s a proxy war goin’ on out there as close to official as it gets ‘fore they send the Spiders in! It’s not hard to put two and two together, Markas. Who is he claimed by?” he asked as he gestured to the barracks behind me.

  I abruptly realised that backing up into the semi-destroyed building might not be the best idea if half the reason for their quarrel was in there, too.

  The stranger shook his head. “Not important, Shepherd. I want-”

  But Jorge cut across him easily. “Is he the Spider Prince’s lad? The High Archivist’s soon to be son-in-law? Has he been claimed by one of the high houses?”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Markas cried, but Jorge only shouted back in his face, now less than a meter apart.

  “Of course it does! You’re here for a fucking job! Take him and leave, and you can live out the rest of your miserable days wishing for my death, for all I care. But if you try and kill these ‘witnesses’ as you call them…”

  Jorge leaned close and abruptly stopped shouting, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “…then I’ll cut you down right here myself, Markas, I swear it on Illyn Solynia herself.”

  The stranger’s eyes widened once more, and he stepped back. Jorge just nodded.

  “Aye, lad. And unlike you, I keep my oaths.”

  Markas drew himself up to his full height and spat to one side. “Very well. We both knew how this would end the moment we saw one another again, Shepherd. We’ll see whose path hews closer to truth soon enough.”

  So saying, the man flexed his hands and a glaive appeared clutched within them. Intricate patterns wove their way up the haft, and the gleaming blade was long and tapered into a thick curve, suited to cutting and slashing through sinew and bone.

  Jorge simply nodded. He tapped the haft of his spear to the ground one more time and spoke a single word.

  The world flashed.