A flurry of thoughts tore through her mind as Iskvold raced towards the only home she had ever known. Had there been an accident? Were they attacked? How did they pass the Beacons unseen? What if the attack came from the east? Was everyone ok? Why had no one been dispatched to warn us? We could have helped. The Vault. Had it burned as well? All those books, all that knowledge.

  After five minutes at full sprint, she had to pause. Lungs and thighs burning, she doubled over, gasping for oxygen before interlocking her fingers behind her head and returning momentarily to a walk. With the pause, she covered the distance to the abbey’s outer courtyard in twelve minutes. Why are the gates open? That’s not normal. Judging by the volume of smoke and tendrils of occasional flame now visible in the upper windows, whatever took place was recent – in the last few hours while she had been idly monitoring the gap. Guilt momentarily overwhelmed her but was quickly replaced by shock. Reaching the iron gates and a full view of the courtyard, Iskvold stopped in her tracks for the second time in less than twenty minutes. This was no accident.

  The courtyard was a battlefield. Drying blood spattered the grey slate stonework in overlapping patterns pooling sickly around four monks motionless on the ground. Not an enemy corpse in sight. Rushing to the nearest victim and rolling him over to check for a pulse, she looked into the dead eyes of Brother Jellen - an elf she had known since childhood. They grew up together here at the abbey. No pulse. Gone. Tears rolled down her cheeks as grief, anger, and disbelief threatened her objectivity. Stay in control! Multiple gashes crisscrossed his torso and face, and she could see the gaping wounds beneath his blood-soaked, tattered robes. Similar parallel slashes covered the palms of his hands. His palms.

  Iskvold‘s head snapped around, quickly surveying the scene. No weapons in sight. They had no warning, slaughtered before any call to arms could be raised. She moved briskly among the others on the ground, nearly slipping on the blood-slicked stone. Sister Karela, Brother Ren, and Brother Avil, all dead. These were accomplished martial artists, more dangerous with their bare hands than most warriors with a sword. What could have cut them down so easily? Her heart constricted with loss as she knelt next to Brother Avil’s body when another thought struck. What if whatever did this was still here? In that instant, a white-hot rage boiled deep in her guts, pushing all rational thought aside. Justice...Retribution…no. Vengeance! With her friends dead and her home razed, an all-consuming rage overwhelmed her. Jumping to her feet, staff in both hands, she let out an animalistic roar and charged into the main structure of the Luminarium.

  The next few minutes felt surreal, as if she was nothing more than a mental observer within her body, aware of everything going on but powerless to change it.

  Entering the cloakroom, a fifth corpse propped open the swinging door to the mess hall. Another friend…can’t stop. Her heart hammering, she stepped over her fallen ally and shouldered the door mid-stride, rocketing it back against its hinges. The room was heavily charred, benches and tables black from the fire, smoke still curling towards the ceiling. Three more bodies charred and still. Keep moving. Kitchen or main hall? Kitchen. She heard herself roar:

  “You want battle? Come and get it! I will rip your limbs off and feed them to you!”

  What was that? Where did that come from? She sprinted across the mess and through the kitchen door. Its wood frame weakened from the fire, the impact from her shoulder sent the slab off its hinges, careening into the shelves storing the abbey’s cookware. The collision launched a large soup pot from the top shelf. She struck it in mid-air, her fury releasing like a coiled spring, sending it forcefully to the ground, clanging off the stone floor. Before it bounced, she hit it again, leaving a large dent. Just a pot…keep going! Two more down. The tatters of Luminarium robes were barely distinguishable on the fringes of their charred remains. She heard herself scream again:

  “Cowards! Where are you!?”

  Bare-handing a smoldering shelf blocking the door to the main hall, she tossed it aside. Pain seared through her instantly, though the rational passenger in her head observed that it hurt less than expected. In addition, the injury seemed to reinforce the rage that had her in its grip like a kite lifted higher on a passing gust of wind. Her focus sharp and narrow, she let out another unintelligible roar and pushed into the main hall.

  Over thirty feet long and twenty feet across, the main hall was the abbey’s social hub. Four rows of polished wooden benches flanked a center aisle, all facing a raised platform. This was the gathering point for announcements and worship. Now it was smoldering rubble, black soot staining the grey stone walls where flames had licked their way higher. Visible among the remains of the furniture, Iskvold counted four more corpses curled into the fetal position and burned beyond recognition, but there was also something else…another creature.

  The rational passenger inside her head estimated it to be nearly seven feet tall with gaunt musculature, the charcoal skin stretched over its emaciated skeletal form. Jagged vertebrae bristled the exterior of its spine and down the long tail encircling its motionless body, ending in a sharp-tipped point. Nasty-looking claws on the hands and feet were stained in blood, as were the four-inch upper and lower incisors protruding from the creature’s jaws. Most uniquely, the back of its skull tapered into a bony horn that curled forward over its head in the shape of a fishhook, coming to a point several inches above the eye sockets. Though dead, the creature’s presence still triggered the fury in control of her actions.

  She heard herself cry out, “Finally!” as she charged the corpse. Her staff came down repeatedly. Ribs. Back. Shoulder. She felt herself draw on her Ki, the magical energy manifesting a white glow onto her fists as she rained down an additional flurry of blows. Head. Head. Head. The creature’s body absorbed each one, never moving, never flinching. Her last strike produced a sickening crack as the skull caved in. Her breathing ragged, she stood over the lifeless attacker and felt her field of vision widen. The passenger regained control as the rage dissipated. She blinked several times, processing the anger-filled rampage. What in Gond’s name was that?

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  After taking a moment to reorient and catch her breath, she flitted quickly among the fallen, checking for any signs of life. Nothing. She could tell there were two male and two female victims, but the bodies were too charred to identify. At least this group was armed, each one still clutching a blackened staff. That made fourteen fallen. Doing some quick math, she calculated the abbey’s full complement. There were thirty in total, twenty-three full-fledged monks, plus Sifu Haft and six acolytes currently in training. They would have been in the Vault doing their studies. The Vault.

  Iskvold pressed on through the main hall, out the side door to the left of the dais, and into the dojo. Racks of weapons lined two walls framing a central heavy woven grass mat with a large painted circle in the middle - the abbey’s main sparring ring. In the circle lay a second of the hook-headed creatures surrounded by three more fallen monks. Oddly, none of these bodies were charred. The weapons racks and everything on them had burned to cinders. In stark contrast, the mat, though riddled with cast-off blood spatter, showed no signs of fire. Iskvold was numb as she looked down into the faces of Kai, Lin, and Finnegan, shoving her foot against the second creature, staff poised to strike. Seventeen. She crossed the dojo towards the transcription room and the Vault.

  One of the two doors was ajar, belching smoke into the larger sparring facility. The transcription room still burned. Normally, this was where the abbey did their commissioned literary work. At any given time, four or five monks would be researching, writing, and transcribing at the long tables with piles of texts from the Vault below spread out in front of them. Tapestries and paintings adorned the walls, along with shelves of supplies – paper, binding, ink, and quills. As Iskvold poked her head in, the room was unrecognizable.

  All the tables had collapsed, with three still actively on fire. The artwork was nothing more than soot outlines on the stone walls. Multiple shelving racks were also alight, their contents already disintegrated. Her hopes buoyed seeing the flush stone of the anterior wall. The Vault was closed! The access point, however, was buried under the flickering rubble.

  Thinking quickly, Iskvold moved to the window on the adjacent wall, driving her elbow into the blackened folding shutters. Need water. Spying the nearby millpond, she reached into her mind, again summoning her Ki. The white energy crackled as she magically reached for the water. Closing her fist and pulling it back into the room, a liquid cylinder two feet wide and thirty feet long burst from the pond’s surface and through the window, cascading across the transcription room. A sustained hiss and a bloom of smoke and steam filled the air. Equally drenched, Iskvold coughed and pushed the hair from her eyes, feeling quite satisfied as she surveyed the space.

  The few stubborn tendrils of smoke that remained rapidly surrendered. Shoving the charred furniture aside, she ran her foot over the charcoal slurry covering the floor to expose the small stone that served as the release for the Vault door. Under normal circumstances, the door was ajar, especially if the abbey’s residents were working down below. Sifu drilled two different security protocols into everyone at the Luminarium to safeguard their knowledge repository. At any sign of outsiders, the door was to be closed, making it all but invisible to anyone unaware of its location. At times of significant threat, the lockstone she now sought was pressed flush with the floor, making the Vault practically impenetrable from either side until the stone was pressed again. Locked. Good. Maybe someone survived.

  Finding the stone unresponsive, Iskvold dropped to her hands and knees, tracing her short fingernails around its outer edges to clear any debris. Prying out a piece of grit, she tried again, and the stone reluctantly popped into its typical raised position. She hurried over to an unremarkable spot in the wall a few feet to her right and pushed. Relieved to feel the familiar click, the stone receded to expose a simple staircase cut from the earth, stone slabs acting as stair treads, descending ten feet before making a right turn. Then - a sound and the faintest rustle of movement below. Instinctively, she gripped the staff as a figure emerged from the shadows at the foot of the stairs. A flash of blue eyes. A familiar stance. Sifu Haft. Iskvold’s posture slumped as she lowered the staff.

  Not particularly tall among humans, Sifu had close-cropped thinning hair and a substantial mustache that stuck out from his lip more than an inch.

  “Iskvold! Praise be to Kord! I thought we might never get out of there!” Haft turned over his shoulder and called back into the Vault, “All clear! It’s Iskvold!”.

  For a man of his advanced age, his sustained fitness was impressive. The abbot sprinted up the stairs two at a time as she stepped back, allowing him to enter. At his back, six acolytes scurried from the Vault below, afraid of too much distance separating them from their teacher.

  “I was giving the initiates a lesson when we heard what sounded like Tiamat crashing a tea party, and they closed and locked us in immediately.”

  His voice trailed off, his jaw muscles flexing as he crested the stairs and surveyed the room.

  Regaining his composure, Haft’s posture went ramrod straight as he turned to Iskvold.

  “Status” was all he said.

  She found his return to discipline settling, and the muscle memory of her training took over. The Drow delivered an emotionless and thorough accounting of all she’d seen and experienced since arriving at the front gates (leaving out only her bizarre rage bender). Sifu and the acolytes listened intently, the former furrowing his brow at several points during the debrief but never interrupting. When she finished, he clasped his hands behind his back, raised himself to his full though modest height, and turned to face the group.

  “Right…This is an immense and unfathomable loss for all of us, and it will take time to process. Even in this most difficult moment, however, we must focus on protecting the Luminarium and our remaining brotherhood first and foremost. I promise there will be time later to mourn and wrestle with what just happened and why. But right now, I need your purpose and clarity of action, however difficult that may be.”

  He turned to face each of them directly as he fired off instructions. “Iskvold - take Esmi and Jin, sweep the rest of the abbey. Make sure the fire is completely out and bring any injured to the mess hall. Nori - you and How begin moving the dead to the outer courtyard. Usha – fetch Tsuta and the rest from the beacon outposts. We will suspend watch duties until we have things back in order. Graver - I want you to ride immediately to the Abbey of the Crystal Dawn…” He paused as he stepped to the window, craning his neck to the left. “Scratch that. The stables have been burned to the ground. First, see if you can find any of the horses wandering about; maybe we’ll get lucky. If you do, ride. If you don’t, you’ll need to go on foot. When you get there, tell Sifu Aganon what happened here and that we need to call on the Pact of the Brotherhood for assistance. Ask him to spread the word to the other orders on our behalf.”

  “Yes, Sifu!” came the chorus in response, and they all moved quickly to their assigned duties.

  The old monk closed the door to the vault and pressed the lockstone back into position, level with the floor.

  “The Vault stays locked until we have things better under control.”