The sins had not escaped time, nor had time escaped the sins. There was none in the world who knew more of sin and time than Teldumor, though it was still unclear which side of the line was his. Both had thrown their punches, taken their beatings, and at the end of the day both looked worse for the wear. It would seem the score was one to one. What was it the gamblers in the lower streets of Nauticus said? Best two out of three. Yet as the night closed in on the world, all bets were off. Who could bet with stakes so high? The fighters, hounds of fate and hell, were released from their corners.

All the fury of the world rained upon them. It hailed and shook with terrible but fleeting wrath, as though it knew where the Harbinger was headed. Perhaps it did, and if so, it could hardly be blamed for it’s efforts to stop them. It was an arm of the storm coming, a tempest that made an excellent cover if they could survive it. Within seconds the passionate gale dissipated into a hushed whisper. It would be back, the storms always were.

There was the soft patter of a raindrop, the shattering of glass, and the spilling of blood; these were the three most common sounds in all Aeon. The blood ran in the street gutters more often than rain, shards of glass forming the banks of the crimson stream. Times were changing, rivalries were dying, but not near fast enough to dam the flow of the red. The blood came from old men and young girls alike, all killed for the same reasons. Not every death was brought on by his name, but the overwhelming of the majority of them were. Such names as his are whispered among the homeless and the lords alike, spoken with fear and awe alike. It was the name that inspired not thoughts but memories, painful and beautiful all at the same time. It summoned sanguine dreams, but most often it wrought nightmarish despair. These were echoes of the past, but none could escape the distant but ever present fear that it heralded the future as well. He had been locked away forever but even that was not long enough to allay the minds of the masses. Even in the decades since the war’s end, the name Teldumor was still synonymous with every aspect of sorrow.

What was left? Disappointment on one side, grief on the other, and seething hatred sparked whenever the two met. The war had hollowed them out, leaving a shell of survival with empty eyes, devoid of anything but unconquerable pain. The graves had been dug but never sealed away from memory. There were exceptions, Zallen and Anna Lee still held onto two very different faces of hope, whereas Corda and Felix had found ways to push away the past. Still, everyone hid grief in some corner of their mind, no matter what facet they bore. De’Lor felt misplaced in time, yet she was not the only one who wished to rewind the clock. A new generation of revolutionaries took up his tattered banner, the black sun upon a white background. The irony was not missed upon all that those closest and those furthest from Teldumor both wished him back. Those furthest still followed the mock up virtues of the crusade. Those closest to Teldumor could have cared less about the crusade; rather they only saw what it was doing to him. History swung full circle, like the rotor blades atop the black metal creature of the night that now soared above the valley.

How was he supposed to feel? Was he supposed to feel anything at all? Felix stared through blurred eyes into the night pressing in. Destiny pressed in with the night, squeezing him tightly and draining all hope from him, constricting him to the point where dream could hardly breathe. Dreams, laughable, the dreams were dead already. All he had were those around him, all he ever had were those around him, but an hour or more later…well, who could say? None of them talked about Teldumor, none of them said anything, but none of them could shake him from their minds. He felt baited, as though they all were pulled to that one inevitable conclusion and each motion to fight it only pushed him further towards it.

He didn’t know why he took the job. He was hurting for money, true, but there were other jobs they could have taken. He was neither loyalist nor revolutionary; such ideals were long ago forgotten. He had done jobs for both the Volkermord and the Templar, though he preferred those few rare jobs that didn’t include 

either. He was never a fan of Haceven and Zallen simply scared the hell out of him but Teldumor…that was another matter entirely.

The sky was a dull monotone and musky grey to only be interrupted by the occasional storm that dragged itself across the heavens like a wounded animal like it did on such days as these. The tempest and the worn heavens began their collision course as cars on a highway, but the night threatened to overwhelm them both as it often did on such days as these. Yet as the night and the storm and the stratosphere all waged their war of color they forced the sun into the limelight and dulled them as they did the rest of Aeon. Between the heavens and the earth were the mountains, high and majestic, now a refuge of a world forgotten, a world that found itself transplanted into stories, which suddenly became dull for their presence and were inevitably dropped for more intriguing settings. Presidents and Councilmen with victories of olive branch and silver tongue evolved, or rather degraded into Warlords and Gunslingers with victories ample enough in gore to sicken a butcher. Whilst morals were swapped for debauchery, the world itself proceeded on a similar path. Governments and people oppressed other governments and other people, men slaughtered men whilst equality and liberation faded out of common then even exotic vernacular. That was, of course, until Teldumor had come along. He was part hero, part horror; part messiah, part macabre maniac. Still, all together he was none of those before, but something else entirely.

Felix watched the maw of night swallow whole the tainted ivory clouds and the raging gale as an anaconda to a mouse for whom the stars were not aligned. He gripped a steel bar, unsure if it would hold him but truly hopeful that it would. With the other hand he gripped the black widebrimmed hat he had cherished and worn for the past few years. His jacket, a worn grey as the skies had been. His rusty blonde hair fell to his shoulders for need of a barber, but in Felix’s line of work such opportunities rarely presented themselves at times coinciding with this schedule, which was nearly as tangled as his hair.

They entered a mist, a grey that bordered white, but remained as the color of the scenery it passed through. It slithered tightly around the tall evergreens, a river of curling tides. The steady beat of the rotor blades only briefly hid the spurts of gunfire. The smell of sulfur availed his nose on such a level as to leave no questions as to its origin: Flintlock rifles, several dozens of them, and primitive rockets that whistled like fireworks. This symphony of death was conjoined by the unmistakable accompaniment of crows, harking and singing overhead. A stray rocket passed their way once; while others were quick enough to flutter out of it’s wayward arch, one saw it at the last moment and let loose an almost comical sigh that still echoed through the air while the crow quickly combust into a descent of unattached black feathers and tiny hunks of crow mass. There were never any promises that the scavengers were without casualties. The last of the men let out volleys into the other’s midst, cutting short some cries with chilling finality and abruptness whilst leading others into a shrill orchestra of pain beyond measure and expression. What must be strewn across the ground? How many arms and legs, with threads of tendons binding them only enough to give the dogs a brief game of tug, were littering the ground concealed by the smoke? Wind allowed for a post-action report to the airborne onlooker, but Felix’s interest in the skirmish had died away as quickly as it had come. Beside him a merciful member of his crew, presumably Lucas, drew up his sniper rifle and shot down the last man where he stood. The wolf-kin withdrew the sniper from the open cargo door, leaving the man to an end without pain, something the dogs who began to press in from the surrounding woods wouldn’t promise.

There are those who are broken, there are those who dream, and there are those who survive. Felix had done all three. At his hip swung a holstered four shooter, the sign of his choice. Half its rounds were explosive, the other half were powerful enough to tear off a man’s head. A dreamer or a broken man would have said that to wield such a weapon required enormous luck, Felix knew different. No luck guided his hand, only skill. As the Black Hawk cruised through the night on his most dangerous rescue mission ever, he hoped both luck and skill were on his side. Ethicas knew he’d need both to survive this.

Lucas stood behind Felix, one hand upon his friend’s shoulder. He too stared into the encroaching night, thoughts of his own weaving as tangled a web as Felix’s. Lucas was a wolf-kin, the most common type of hybrid. Corda had once, whilst the three of them were intoxicated beyond reasoning, referred to him as their manimal. He friend was lupine, complete grey fur and evil yellow eyes atop his long pointed snout. He wore a black leather jacket and wore a camo bandanna on his head, covering his canine ears. Across his lap was a sniper rifle, a gun that had saved Felix more times than he could count. Guns, what would they do without them. Guns were not rare per-say, but the majority of the population still trusted the cold steel of a blade.

Thoughts of Lucas never came without the bright thought of Corda. Felix looked up to the cockpit for a glimpse of her but only caught sight of her hand as it flicked a switch or two. His thoughts became more muddled than ever when Corda entered the equation. He looked around the rest of the cabin while it still held his attention. De’Lor, in her long purple dress with a slit along the side making an attempt at seduction, sat back against the seat and brushed her long black hair out of her face. She found his gaze and made a slight warm smile, Felix ignored it. She would have been out of his league. She was a fanatic, loyal to the Volkermord and, by extension, to her even madder uncle who led the cult. That was Zallen, his current benefactor and generous donor of this fine black helicopter, the Harbinger. Felix had met Zallen once, which placed him only one degree from Teldumor. Many would kill for such an opportunity, most would sooner kill themselves than have the connection via Zallen. Felix took note of her only weapon, a sacrificial dirk strapped to her exposed thigh. Unfortunately for De’Lor it was the only item of interest involving her leg.

She tried in vain to catch his eye again, a pathetic spectacle that nearly brought forth an unexpected chuckle from Lucas. He stifled it with a cough, but her fierce glare proved his effort had failed. Lennix sat apart from the others, out of disinterest more than a longing for isolation. Still, with the fullest respects to Felix and his crew, the event was something more than just significant. The elderly goat-kin examined and reexamined every entry in the latest edition in the latest of his histories. Being the only hybrid in all the world without hands, Lennix clumsily thumbed through the pages with his hooves with an uncharacteristic nervous mien. His shaggy white bears hardly stood out from his white fur that, like Lucas’s grey, coated his body. His curled gold horns swung ivory beads from side to side as Lennix shook his head in another uncharacteristic show of anxiety. While not even the goat-kin expected such a strong response, it was not terribly inexplicable. Teldumor was more than a historic subject; he had been Lennix’s adopted son. From up ahead, Corda swore at the controls. It dawned on Felix that he wasn’t sure she had ever flown…anything.

Lucas wrapped his fingers around a small beaded line and uttered a deeply remorseful prayer unto the heavens and to Ethicas. The Harbinger soared through the night while the steady beat of the rotor blades kept them afloat. The trees passed beneath them, then around them, and the Black Hawk was suddenly emerged in a world of dark green. The heavens darkened yet more, grey drowning in the ever deepening sea of deep blue and even into the ranges of purple. Gold beams broke through some of the heavenly tides, but magnificent as they may be they were doomed to recede into submission. Darkness lapped against Felix’s legs, crawling up his legs and onto his chest. He drowned in it, he wallowed in it, he thrived in it.

De’Lor watched carefully as Lucas and Felix set up the jury-rigged mini-gun, something of an abominable cross between a Vickers machine gun and a steel shark with a spinning head. It was ugly and composed mostly of scrap metal, running on gas and prayers to Ethicas. The crew was a little short on both, trying to squeeze a few prayers in the absence of hope for more gas. Felix hoped Lucas had thought ahead of time on both accounts.

“Make sure you don’t shoot him,”

Neither Lucas nor Felix gave De’Lor complaint any thought. Lennix alone responded and only to chuckle and shake his head. Felix tinkered with some of the switches, not for any mechanical purpose but rather from subdued nervousness,

“Lucas, get the ammo belts. I’ll need you to feed it in.”

Lucas nodded as though they hadn’t already gone over this twice, giving Felix breathing space and time to think. Time to reconsider…

No, they were here, and this is what they had to do. Not out of contract, it was more than that. They had to do it, something within compelled him. Lucas extended his furry grey hands and tucked two black pistols into the underside of his jacket. He nodded nervously to Felix, who closed his eyes and tried, in vain, to ease his tension. Felix collapsed against one side of the open cargo doors, twirling the gun around with the tip of his leather boot. The dull roar of the helicopter was inaudible over the silence, like the ticking of a clock when constantly immersed in it. The clock ticked, it ticked for all of them. The hands spun round and round, faster than Felix could handle, slower than he wished for. Lucas flicked the laser sight on his rifle on and off absently. Lennix thumbed through the pages of his text but never spared them a glance. Their eyes were inexplicably drawn to the open door and to the forest beyond it. The high grey mountain loomed off to the side, green frothing sea of mist gently drifting beneath them. There were two tree lines, one where the eternal white crown of the mountain played a dirty game of King of the Hill against the deep green masses that had long since given up on any hope of scaling the alpine heights. The beautiful green belt ended abruptly with the demonic pale mist tainted with a sickly green. What visible land beneath it was blacker than the night, than the oil within the Harbinger, blacker than the Harbinger itself. Deep crags that seemed to descend cleanly into the abyss were visible from the sky, wedging up the mountains like the geologic wake of some invisible tanker. Towards Nauticus were visible deeper gorges, where giants or demons had rended the sloping foothills of the valley with desperate swipes of their claws as though they were trying to flee from that wretched mist. Legends spoke of such a time, where the titian-gods Ethicas and Odessa waged a wild and apocalyptic battle across the land. Where Odessa’s blood was spilt it tainted and burned the lands, this hellish mist rising from it in ghostly wisps. When Ethicas dragged him back into his subterranean prison his feral grabs at the earth left the deep gnashes in the land. They were visible only when the green tides receded. They were magnificent, but terrible. One glimpse was enough, maybe even more than enough. For all his skepticism in all things theological, sight of the dead lands were enough to make him question his agnosticism. He didn’t question it though, which was what perhaps led to the agnosticism in the first place. It wasn’t that he passionately disbelieved in Ethicas, but rather that it was beyond his field of vision and not of pressing importance to him. One day it may be, but all his efforts were focused on avoiding that day at any cost. He looked around at Lucas and at Corda’s hand, for want of an actual full body glimpse, and thought briefly upon this last sentiment. It was a sullen conclusion, but the truth was that survival pressed upon him above friendship. He was a man of his word, and any cost was truly any cost.

Felix tore his eyes from the forest to look around the cabin once more. De’Lor grinned and toyed with her dagger, removed from her garter-style holster and making it’s ostentatious debut in her nimble and slender fingers. She smiled like her uncle, but beneath the moonstruck mask Felix might have seen a hint of truly human sorrow. Felix didn’t give her a long enough examination to see such. Lennix’s book fell to the floor with a clatter and as the Harbinger banked around mountainside it slid across the slick black floor, falling precariously close to the open cargo. Felix’s boot slipped from the mini-gun and struck steel just ahead of the book, pinning it to the ground. He was unsure whether he had stopped it intentionally or not, but he slid it back to Lennix without sparing a glance. Lennix kicked it back, over Felix’s boot and out the cargo door. This merited a curious glance from Lucas but only a shrug from Felix, though the casual gesture hid his own confusion. As the Harbinger swung around the mountainside Xin Valreth came into view.

The Harbinger fell as low and as fast as it could fly, blades skimming over the tops of the trees. Up ahead the forest gave way to a cliff protrusion, imposing in it’s own right. It towered at least seventy feet in the air, filled with jagged balconies and rocky spears who’s base remained concealed by the shadows of deep caves. The Harbinger ascended slowly, it’s tail nearly clipping against one of the spears. Timidly at first, then more surely, barely clothed natives inched out of the caves. The Corda spun the Black Hawk around so the open door was to the cliff face. Felix waved them away and considered starting up the mini gun. They carried no visible weapons, only greatly curios and blank stares of wonder. This was the furthest mountain in the Aeon chain, dropping down on three sides into the abyss with unforgiving finality. Even on the clearest day there was nothing to be seen from here but bland skies and the unending mist. The sun was eclipsed by the solitary mountain chain, standing like sentinels against the evils of the dead world that threatened to 

overwhelm at even the slightest betrayal of opportunity. The world changed, in a single instant, from a jade world to a ruby one. The natives wore little but leather pants and some other ragged items of cloths that must have been stolen from the prisons above. Their faces and arms were covered in elaborate tribal tattoos, even the children’s. De’Lor scowled out at them, too far for speaking, impossible still under the dull howl of the rotor blades. Corda waved politely at them and Lucas nodded a haphazard greeting. At first glance it seemed as though the war had not touched them, until several ran back inside and carried out a long strip of cloth with immense reverence. The women carried it more carefully than they did their children, whom they had dropped to devote both hands to the carrying. They came out along one of the spears Corda spun around to avoid, an orange monolith carved with a natural flat on top, shaped peculirlarly like a ironing board. The men stared at the white fabric and unabashedly wept in sorrow and pride, more the second than the first. The white fabric was slightly stained by the nuances of time, a tea-colored rim and dark grey stabs of irremovable dirt here and there, but it had overall been meticulously cared for. They unfolded it over the side of the rocky spear and pinned it to the top with heavy boulders. De’Lor gasped in pleasant shock and the rest only barely covered their surprise. With an epic and steady rippling wave, the Volkermord flag swung gently upon the side of the cliff face. It was massive and had once adorned the great hall in La Roche, Teldumor’s capital. De’Lor considered demanding it back, but a glare from Lennix knew her unspoken protest and firmly kept it unspoken. The people of the cliff cheered and their chieften, a mix-matched old man in leather animal skins and an ornate Volkermord black beret, gave them a firm salute. The Harbinger could only have one purpose in Xin Valreth and the people there knew it, as the guards overhead would once they caught sight of it. Lucas flashed them a friendly Volkermord gesture, index and middle fingers spread apart into a V formation.

“Wait, Corda, take her down onto one of those spears.”

Corda’s froze in the front and the Harbinger stalled briefly in the air to match her temperament. She turned slowly back to Lennix with large green eyes narrowed in a wild mixture of curiosity and rage. Her blonde hair, dirtied by every imaginable mechanical substance, was tied back into a bun but a strand or two still managed to glue itself across her forehead, equally stained by grease and oil. Beneath the mechanic there was, supposedly, beautiful woman, like the frog that turned into a prince. Corda insisted there was, but Felix was afraid if he wiped away the grease she might have disappeared. Her shapely figure would tend to agree with her claims, but her ferocious and unapproachable attitude not only overpowered her princess body but spiritually impaled it and tossed it into the green sea. She was no one’s princess.

“You want me to what?” her scowl almost spat the last word at Lennix. She was not a truly angry person, just a very frustrated one. Calling to mind past adventures, Felix was now sure that she had never flown…anything.

“Take it down, onto the rocky outcropping.”

Lennix was lucky he sat in the back, had he been any closer he would have been within Corda’s reach. De’lor seemed ignorant of the whole situation. Lucas, who sat directly behind Corda and next to the open cargo door that tilted slightly towards the ground impossibly far below, seemed to consider which death was more horrible. Looking once back at Corda, be began to lean just slightly out the window. Lennix seemed not at all intimidated by her gaze, which may have been a bit of a mistake. Still, he wrapped the cord around his waist and kindly bid De’Lor to tie the knot. In his green vest and black waistcoat his costume seemed to be missing a monocle and a top hat alone. With one hoof he delicately reached into his vest and retrieved a silver pocket-watch with the magnetic chips embedded into his hoof for this very reason.

“I’ve got some conversing to do with the natives. De’Lor, would you kindly accompany me?”

“But Teldumor…”

“Exactly. Would you be a doll and grab as many of those guns as you can carry under one arm?”

Corda shook her head and drifted closer to the wall, “She’s got no chest to hinder her.”

De’Lor’s fingers deftly found the tip of the knife’s handle, even that was more than enough in her hands. She spun the blade around and trimmed off the tip of her fingernails, knife blade on exactly the same axis as her fingers. There was no resistance, like a knife through hot butter. At the last second the dropped the blade down a little, pricking the skin beneath and drawing crimson blood from the fingertip. In the same motion she spun the knife around her waist and it cruised down her leg to the garter sheath. Corda stared in awe between her fingertips and De’Lor, who smiled and began to lift the guns. Lucas grinned,

“Can we see that again?”

Before Corda could turn her head to them, Felix pointed defensively to Lucas. Lennix turned to them before he began his descent, “Pick us up where the prison meets the cliff,” before Lucas could inject his question, Lennix held up a hoof, “you’ll find out soon enough. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Just don’t make too much fuss inside the prison, don’t do anything stupid, and for Ethicas’s sake keep your heads low when we come through.”

Neither Lucas, Felix, nor Corda could do anything more than stare with gaping stupidity at Lennix. He, in return, stared in confusion at their confusion. It took a jostle of the Black Hawk, which in Corda’s neglect had slowly drifted away from the cliff in natural aversion. De’Lor rolled her eyes and gripped Lennix’s cord.

“That’s our cue,” Lennix punctuated this line with a cheap grin, likely purchased from the same shop as his vest and waistcoat. He wrapped his furry white arms around the cord and hugged it to his chest, “Good luck, and don’t get yourselves killed.” He fell over the side and let De’Lor lower him down. Once he touched ground she grabbed the cord with one hand,

“Nevermind you, just don’t get Teldumor killed.”

She slid down after Lennix with a copied grin. Felix and Lucas looked to each other, mouths still agape and eyebrows scrunched up in indignation.

“I think I should be offended,” the look seemed frozen on his face, even when he spoke.

“I think so too.”

From the front Corda swore profusely and flicked switches with great gusto. The helicopter shook up and down, sending De’Lor tumbling the last few feet down. A wicked cackle emerged from the cockpit and the Harbinger rose into the air.

“Lucas,” Felix nodded to the door mounted mini-gun. Lucas mumbled something in affirmative and pulled out the ammo belts. The Harbinger’s ascent hastened, the rock wall in front of him becoming little more than an orange and brown blur of a rocky twilight. The survival will of the day buckled and faded, cowering in the face of death by night. The Harbinger surmounted the ridge and froze, cargo door opened and the barrel of the mini-gun pointed at the general direction of the prison.

Felix had expected a cookie cutter maximum security prison, they were built one atop the other on one of the far valleys. Xin Valreth was not what Felix expected. Towering spires of oily black rose at least another few stories in the air, each topped by an unused heavy weapon of some sort or another. Some chains were strung between the towers, added as an artistic touch perhaps. The ones still connected on two ends to the towers hung limply, most layered in a drooping green moss. Most of the chains were only connected at the very ends; the rest had rusted off and fallen to the ground below. What had seemed to be decades for the rest 

of the world had weathered upon Xin Valreth as though centuries had passed. The years and climate had not been kind to this forgotten fortress. It was smaller than he expected though, and within seconds he found the entrance from his aerial perch.

“’You’ll find out soon enough’ he says,” Felix grumbled, letting loose a lead volley on an orange stain glass dome within the courtyard. The Harbinger flew broadside towards the dome, lowering itself between the abandoned minarets. It ducked suddenly beneath one of the chains and came dangerously close to the towers on both ends, tips of the black-hawk all too closely passing between them for what seemed to be little more than the thrill of a challenge. Corda was fairly cocky for someone who was just now learning to fly.

The bullets shattered the dome, glass cascading a rain of golden glass into the deepening darkness within the prison.

“ ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’ he says,” Felix continued as he hefted a leek silver rifle, an XM8, and gripped the cord with his hand, gloved with a special device that gripped the line with similar devices on the insides of his boots, “ ‘Just don’t too much fuss’ he said!”

Lucas came up beside him. With a nod they both jumped and fast lined down, sliding with dizzying speed. The ground grew closer as the Harbinger seemed to drift away overhead,

“ ‘Don’t do anything stupid’ he said!” Lucas only half listened, nodding when it seemed appropriate. Felix held onto the line with one hand and pressed the hat against his head with the barrel of his XM8. They descended though the center of the shattered dome, guns blazing before they touched ground. It would have been impossible to see had the room not suddenly lit up with such a terribly ring of gunfire. It was featureless save for the grey indent in the center of the circular room. It was a pit, of sorts, the killing floor, which rose to a ring around the room that branched off into several dimly lit hallways. It was from this ring that came the sporadic and frantic bursts of highly inaccurate gunshots.

Lucas drew out the pistols from his coat and dropped into a low crouch, prison guards falling like painted targets. He spun slowly, gun’s held wide, maintaining his low crouch. Felix stood beside him; hat shot off by a stray bullet. He fired with a seemingly random pattern, whirling about and kicking up dust with his long brown coat. Lucas thoughtlessly concluded a long mused question as to why they were called dusters. Felix laughed manically and let loose another wild spatter of bullets and blood.

“For Ethicas sake keep you heads low!” Lucas shouted about the wild whistling of the bullets. He bit off the pin of a black grenade and lobbed against the wall, aimed perfectly to bounce down onto a section of the ring near one of the hallways. Mid descent from its ricochet against the wall it soundlessly imploded and sprayed a white powder beneath it like a rain of infernal snow. The first guard raised his face for just a second, the first speck gently descending onto the tip of his nose. It tingled at first, forcing forth a childish giggle from the guard, but then it burst into full purple flame. It caught onto his flesh as though it were blanketed in oil. It engulfed his face and devoured it, the blaze clawing it’s way down the rest of the body with unholy vigor. The prison guards too late realized the nature of the snow, it ensnared them and scorched every inch of them unmercifully in a silence broken only by their hellish screams. Within seconds all was quiet save for the solitary cackle of embers upon the last body, the conflagration’s sick whisper of satisfaction. Lucas rose from his crouch, caught by his collar before he could sprint ahead.

“Felix,” his feet never stopped trying to sprint ahead, “Teldumor’s down that hall.”

Felix nodded, “That’s why we’re not going that way. We’re going,” he pointed to the hall adjacent to it, “that way.”

Felix began to stride confidently in the direction he had indicated, attaching an M203 grenade launcher beneath the barrel of his rifle as he walked. Lucas shook his head but followed,

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me too. They’ll be guarding his cell, obviously, and the entire hallway will have their guns trained on that entrance,” Felix pulled himself up onto the ring and helped Lucas up, “So thus, the second we step through…”

“Naturally,” Lucas nodded.

“No, not naturally,” Felix corrected, “not natural at all.”

Felix proceeded down the triangular hall, lit every few paced with a bright naked bulb strung from the ceiling on a lonely cord. A long the walls were the cells, the slanted walls being made up of the prison bars. The bars were the slanted floor of the cells, which was all they had to sleep on. Eyes of every color stared out from the cells, one crammed full with an entire family. Something dropped out of the cage; Lucas saw in disgust that it was a colorless and disfigured dead baby. Felix kicked it aside and kept walking,

“The cells here are larger, to keep their backs connected with the cells on the other side,” Lucas hoped Felix spoke from having seen the blueprints. Felix’s logic had proven itself right many times but the consequences were lethal when it wasn’t, “The walls are made thin intentionally so the prisoners can talk through them. The Templar sometimes impersonate prisoners on the other side of the wall to get information out of new prisoners, but I digress. The locks are electronic, Lennix should be disabling them anytime…”

With a hesitant shudder, the cell doors of Xin Valreth slid open. Night was in its deepest throes, the shadows had gained dominance outside, and inside a different darkness had been unleashed.

“Move aside please,” Felix waved away the scraggly rat-kin in the cell in front of them. Lucas grinned when he realized Felix’s plain. The gunfighter brought the rifle against his shoulder and switched on the grenade launcher.

Lucas mouthed the word just before it was carried out, “Boom.”

The round struck the wall with a tremendous tremble, throwing forth a shroud of dust and leaving behind the absence of wall.

Felix turned to Lucas, “Shall we?”

“After you.”

Cries of agony and screams of gunfire engulfed them. The prisoner in the other cell was thrown to the ground, dead from the concussion of the blast. The other prisoners had taken to opportunity to make leave of their cells, their sentences commuted by this unnatural force. They took the guards as any would after spending over a decade locked up as so and treated…unkindly. The guards had guns, the prisoners had hatred; the material against the immaterial. The seething fury put up a good fight, but the rattle of the guns beat them into bloody pulps. A guard with a cutlass, pierced through a prisoner, only to turn and have his face turned into an object only comparable to a plumb after being dropped from a nauseating height. Felix loaded another clip into the rifle and opened fire, Lucas by his side doing the same. The prisoners were decimated quickly, though not before taking down at least ten guards. Still, there were ten left in the hall, each with their guns honed onto Felix and Lucas. In the pit they had the element of surprise and darkness, but here there was little of either, though traces of surprise and fear were still visible on some of the rookie Templar. It was not the rookies that worried Felix though, it would only take two bullets from one of the more senior commanders to end himself and Lucas. They stood off, weapons pointed to each other, neither willing to fire the first shot.

Dimly at first, then more strongly, came the faint chorus of a distantly recognizable take on a common tune. Lennix was visible first as the end of the hall, De’Lor at his side, then the tribes of the cliff behind them with the remainder of the prisoners intermixed with them. There must have been at least a hundred of them, all grim faced and gripping some manner of crude weapon. The first Templar to surrender was the most senior one.

Lucas ran down the hall first, leaving the Templar in the hands of the prisoners and the tribes. He ran up through the ramp at the end of the hall into another dark room, this one being the first room of the prison and the only one of any real importance. Obelisks adorned with faintly glowing green runes were posted around a single figure slumped over in a beam of blue moonlight from a circular window high above. Chains rose from his arms and were linked to the tops of the obelisks, shackles around his wrist obviously having been present since his inception. His shirt was gone, showing a chest and arm riddled with tattoos and brands forced on him by the Templar. Genocide at the Mines, Burning of the Villages, the Gassing of the Far Reaches, the Battle of Nauticus, all were visible across his shoulders and chest. The images wound up his neck and even onto his neck, where a black mop of hair hung over his face.

A man stepped out of the shadows behind him, in a white and cold centurion’s crown and a red cloak that spread across his back, over his shoulders, and down across his chest, parting only in the center to show a chainmain vest and a golden compass rose, the symbol of Nauticus. He was haggard and aging beyond years, his face was pressed to the bones beneath, and shave as he may he could never rid himself of the stubble across his face. His eyes had sunken into his head, the deep blue hue of long ago faded into a light grey from years here in the darkness.

“I am the warden of this prison,” at this he drew a long rapier and pressed it to the nape of Teldumor’s neck, “And you will leave! Leave, now!”

Felix walked in behind, calmly blade his arm over Lucas’s shoulder, his fingers ending where they wrapped tightly around his ornate four-shooter. Without a word he fired, round passing beneath Teldumor’s ear and striking true to the blade. The round, by the mercy of Ethicas, was not explosive, lest the story be shortened to this single chapter. The blade broke apart as though it were little more than ash, brittle shards fell to the ground not with a clatter but with a light tap. The round continued and pierced through the warden’s knee, throwing his legs out from under his and throwing him forward onto the ground like a misused ragdoll. Lucas and Felix came to either side of Teldumor and knelt by his side, working at the shackles furiously.

“No,” his voice was weak from time but forceful with guilt. His voice was, even in this state, ensnaring to the soul. Every word was spoken with gravity, and it seemed a pity there was no scribe there to right each line down, “Leave me! Don’t…just go. This is my lot, by fate, my all too just punishment. Here I can…” his voice wavered and trembled, “…do no harm. Let me do no more harm…”

The shackles broke from Teldumor’s wrists and all he could think of was how he used to fake an injury or sickness to fool Lennix into allowing him to stay home. Upon reflection, it occurred to him that Lennix let him stay home because he knew Teldumor needed a break, not because he could be fooled by some twelve year old mountebank. Lennix knew every disease or injury Teldumor could have possibly had and would have recognized any one of them before Teldumor ever felt a symptom, but Lennix knew even better than Teldumor what a twelve year old boy needed. More than that though, he knew what Teldumor needed, he had always known even in times when maybe Teldumor himself hadn’t. He saw one arm looped over the gunfighter’s shoulder and another flopped over the shoulder of the wolf-kin. He knew he should feel them, he tried to feel them. He could move his fingers, but he only knew so because he could see them curl and uncurl feebly in one hand. A cry of protest rose from within him, a conscious within him prepared to storm the Bastille. It would take no prisoners, pardon no sins, and leave nothing forgotten. This mob within, that vast 

valley of the faces he could never erase, it had never left anything drift away from his conscious and showed no signs of shifting. He could feel nothing, not his feet sliding across the cold steel, not the spilled blood that it had been dipped in. It was as though he were a leper, though for all of the tortures he had undergone it made no sense that they would have deprived him of his senses. The mob spilled over into his mouth, the deluge conspiring to put the tongue into action, the mouth being forced open as though by a force wholly externally, a crowbar of desperation.

“No,” he wanted to scream, but he could think of no other words that could illustrate to them why he needed to return back to that cell. They would protest, or worse they might think him mad. Lennix had known best, and not since his teenage years had he doubted that, but nonetheless he felt here the affirmative knowledge that what conspired here in this abyss was wrong beyond measure.

No, not beyond measure. What Teldumor had done set the standard. Somberly those thoughts returned with such vengeance that they were impossible to even consider repressing. The new spark of condemnation sent the mob into action yet again, this time the protest left his tongue. It slithered weakly out his lips but just as it seemed to gain force it faded with a hushed submission, as breath on a cold winter’s day. But it would not be silenced, how could it be? This time it poured beyond his lips, uncontrollably he shouted at them, raged at them, unsure even of what he said. It stopped them, Felix and Lucas both, but only for the second it took them to look back at him. The prisoners and tribesmen pressed in around him, their faces all suddenly replaced with others. They stunk of the grave but looked as its inhabitants. He knew them, he knew them all, but all their faces were those of the dead. There were scores of them, most without names, some with names all too familiar. The weight of the world suddenly pressed down upon him. The wolf-kin must have felt the sudden jerk too, for the arm fell from his shoulder and fell soundlessly to the ground below. The gunslinger too felt the arm slip away. Teldumor fell onto the ground, his fingers trying to find some sign of remembrance. He had been here, not in this prison, but in this position. How many times had he fallen just as so, hands scraping across the ground and pulling up…what? Dirt? Grass? Often times it was sand. How many different emotions had been present? It struck him painfully, the burning remembrance seared him across every muscle. He fell over onto his side and curled up unabashedly, weeping uncontrollably into the cold steel. The world overwhelmed him, it was not his world. The prison was his world, his punishment. He heard Lennix’s voice, Haceven’s voice, Anna Lee’s voice, and so many others. He opened his eyes to see Lennix standing over him, around him was a ring of unknown faces.

By Ethicas she looked so like Anna Lee. She carried herself in a far different manner, haughtier, but that came with the other familiar traces in her blood. He saw it in her cheeks, in her eyes. Zallen was there like a scar. She said something to him, known only because her lips moved, but he was unsure if he heard what she said. The voice though was distinctly Zallen’s with an even greater aristocratic twang. The resemblance to Anna Lee was uncanny, but the similarities to Zallen were all too natural. Her voice was tender like Anna Lee’s, but with that reverence that gnawed at Teldumor’s soul.

Then there was Haceven. He was nearly identical, only ten years younger than Haceven had ever been in Teldumor’s lifetime. Teldumor had no notion of time, even the distant passing of the sun seemed to flow irregularly, catching all of the snags and tides in time’s river. Still, the sun still rose in the east and set in the west, time couldn’t have reversed its flow. The wolf-kin saw the recognition in Teldumor’s eyes, his own reflecting some common sorrow in his heritage. Haceven, of all the names and faces that had crossed him in the past decade that one carried the most anger with it, a rage that subtly ran both ways.

They stood over him until the rugged blonde gunfighter and the younger Haceven helped him to his feet. Teldumor was too weary to fight them away, too weary to assist. It all passed before his eyes as though he inhabited someone else, as though at any minute he would turn his head and see his soul-less carcass still rotting upon those chains, where it truly needed to be. He even turned his head back, hoping to catch confirmation that this was all some foolish nightmare. Teldumor almost believe the delusion himself, so much to that a cry of horror welled up from deep inside when he saw the chain’s without their quarry. The weakness, fueled by the night, trounced the livid horde within.

“Lennix,” the goat-kin distantly heard someone call his name, though all thoughts and senses were devoted to the sight of his adopted son beneath him, “Lennix!”

Snapped away from his trance, he jerked his head up and looked around for the caller. Felix grabbed his shoulder, “Lennix, how do we get out of here.”

It still took a second for the old goat-kin to reorient himself, “What, oh, right. Well, we can hardly go in the way we came. So…” he rambled on, trying to force Teldumor from his thoughts and to summon details from the map he had seen. He shook his head, nothing came forth. He tried, but it all twisted and contorted and eventually found it’s way back to Teldumor.

“You don’t know?”

“It won’t be hard to get out,” Lucas pressed a cold hand against Felix’s shoulder, “we retrieved Teldumor far more quickly than we expected. That gives us ample time,” he turned to the assembled masses, “anyone know how to get out?”

The tribal commander stepped forward but Lennix’s attention broke apart. De’Lor was already by Teldumor’s side and hardly registered Lennix’s presence. She knelt by him, stroking his oily strands of hair out of his face, revealing the purple and gold dragon tattooed around the outside of his right eye. His eye lids were tight shut, perhaps it was for the best. Maybe she alone had seen what they had done to his eyes, the once regal purple. Those eyes were dead, and with a sudden shudder she brought herself to wonder what else could have been destroyed. She ran her hand through his hair, pulling him up onto her lap and staring into his shut eyes.

“My messiah,” she whispered, “What have they done to you?”

They were like coals, a dull onyx throughout. He still saw, but his eyes, those enchanting violet eyes, they were gone. She had seen them only once before, when she was very young, but it was enough to burn them into her mind. When she closed her eyes, she saw his. They were tender, personable, yet also magnificent and possessing an otherworldly wisdom that bore into the deepest pits of your soul and could truly feel you. He could feel your pain, you joy, and he brought it upon himself. His eyes had been a reflection of who he was, it seemed that had continued. She would spend the nights reading about Teldumor, dreaming about riding into battle by his side, but here he was, this broken and altogether pathetic man enveloped in his own sin. She stroked his hair more vigorously, drawing a curious stare from Lennix. Where was the Teldumor she knew, surely this was couldn’t be the same man. It was an imposter, it had to be. She shook her head, warding off the evils of truth, tears of acceptance coming to her eyes as her mind furiously fought to keep them away. Where was Teldumor, the real Teldumor, the one who rode into Nauticus upon the great white raven, the one who exterminated the dragon vermin in the deserts of New Acre, the Teldumor who raised La Roche from the ground almost singlehandedly, the one who brought a never before seen golden age into this world just when it reached its darkest days, the one who had brought a hope into the world, the one who had given her hope when she needed it most.

“De’Lor?”

She looked up to see Lennix and Felix staring strangely at her. She met their stare and raised them one, matching it with unparalleled intensity as though they had roused the beast within her. But her glare softened into a cherry blush of embarrassment and she lowered Teldumor to the ground.

What now? The thoughts echoed from her mind into those around her, each reaching that inevitable question. What happens next? Lennix bent down and lifted his son with a wholly foreign strength, clutching him close to his chest. All eyes were upon him, he felt it, but he couldn’t take his own off Teldumor. Lennix could hardly stand a year without his son, how had he managed ten?

“Let’s go.”

The procession behind them slowly died away, flaking apart in small clusters of two or three. Felix lost count of hallways, only the glow of the next naked light hanging from the ceiling gave him any indicator of distance. It was not far, not nearly as far as it seemed to be. He knew they were nearing the surface, it was one of the many senses he had learned as a child. The mines held a life of their own, as did the path of the gun. This darkness was not home, but it was familiar. Steel plate after steel plate clanged resoundingly with every footstep, the slope growing steeper. There was no wind to speak of, only the stale chill of the underground.

Every thought overcame him, yet at the same time he could think of nothing. No words, no images, no emotions, it was as though his mind had suddenly gone blank. He was unaware how long it had been so, he gave it little thought. It was a not a state of stupidity, but rather a vacuum gunslingers fell into just before a kill. He gripped the XM8 tight, but his fingers twitched for want of the four-shooter at his hips. It seemed to grow heavier, demanding his attention, his affection. Richard, the man who brought it into the profession, had crafted the first one personally. This one was an improved copy, with greater balance and lighter than the last. Based in white, red and gold lines ran up from the snakeskin hilt to the end of the barrel. It was beautiful, it was lethal.

Patience, it’s time would come. The warden’s knee was not enough to fill it’s bloodlust. Felix blocked it from his mind with deft ease, his eyes and all the other’s drawn to the opening ahead. There was little difference between the dark of the hall and the dark of the night, but straight ahead the murky clouds had parted and showed the glimpse of a milky band that stretched across the sky. Even in that small pocket of the skies beyond the world were packed millions of stars, flickering and staring across at them. Even Felix had to stop for a second, the others coming behind him. De’Lor started to stammer something in amazement but awe silenced her. It was a second of pure beauty, one that came rarely in Aeon, but the clouds threatened to shut close this eye into the other worlds. As if by a prayer to Ethicas, and indeed there were many that night, the winds changed direction. The clouds stretched wide, rallied again for one last attempt to close the miraculous scene, then were sundered and thrown apart decisively. Lucas sank to his knees and Felix had to lean against the wall for support, the breaking of the clouds revealed a spectacular array, a sky filled with millions of diamond burning bright. The heavens shone down in full glory, blazing and sparkling through the darkness.

A phlegm filled cough brought them back to Aeon, back to Xin Valreth. The stars above became a backdrop for them, the stars below. Lennix moved forward first, the others following reluctantly as though they feared the skies were kept open by sheer willpower alone. Still, when their feet began their steady beat upon the dirt and titanium beneath, a new vigor took hold and all broke into a sprint. They ran between shipping containers and great stacks of oil drums as though they had grown up here together. They ran to anywhere, to nowhere. Thudding ahead alerted them to the presence of the Harbinger shortly before it visibly soared directly over them, underbelly silhouetted against the burning lights of Aeon’s heaven. It banked to the side and seemed to skid across the sky to a halt at an opening just beyond their cove of shipping containers and oil drums. It descended gently leaving only a few feet of separation between the helicopter and the ground. Lennix’s hooves beat against the steel, stone, and dirt beneath him. He ran to the Harbinger, bearing Teldumor in his arms, and half leapt, half rolled, into the back. De’Lor followed, sprinting though it appeared like her lithe feet never touched steel. She gracefully leapt in behind Lennix, first checking Teldumor, then looking back across the short steel plains to Lucas and Felix. Lucas followed and hopped in, only Felix remained.

A strange sensation overcame the gunfighter as the soles of his boots brushed repeatedly against the steel beneath. His eyes were fixated on the helicopter, but his mind was elsewhere, his mind was nowhere. The gunfighters emptiness returned, and as he came within arm’s reach of the Harbinger it begun to wreak through his mind, leaving only the vacuum behind. He froze, one arm holding the XM8, the other sliding down the black side of his duster. Lucas and De’Lor stared at him strangely, eyebrows raised and Lucas even extending a hand to help him up the few feed. Corda shouted something back, only traces of her voice passing 

into the vacuum. His hand slithered around the side of the duster, tightly gripping snakeskin, the cold press of steel sending a potent tingle from his arm across into his spine, with all the pressure as though every bone in his body were broken, with all the pleasure of a firm grasp around a woman in love. Around…Corda? He didn’t know why she occurred to him over any other woman just then, but she did. Before he could ponder, the vacuum overcame once more. The fingers wove into the steel trigger, a single round ready to pounce from within the barrel. Twisting, seeming to fall backward, his arm whipped the pistol out of the holster. His other arm grasped the stock of the XM8, and flung it, sending it spinning the infinite distance between the Black Hawk and the shipping grove. There stood, on knee oozing with blood, the Warden.

The weapon, amazingly light, spun through the air, aiming true to the Warden’s chest. The muzzle flashed forward towards it’s target of feeble flesh and the broken chain mail beneath the red cloak. The warden never flinched as the gun spun forward. At the last second he dodged to the side with a gymnast’s dexterity, the gun whistling past in disbelief and lodging itself firmly into one crimson oil barrel, slowly toppling over from the top of one oil pyramid, oil spewing out like blood.

The familiar steel tread up his torso, touching against the duster, white cotton shirt, and the finely tuned muscles beneath, sending it’s chill strait through to the bone. As the four-shooter reached the arm it arced up past his ear. The vacuum seized hold, aim aligning true, the brilliant flash of orange and gold from the muzzle lost on the gunfighter, for whom such a spectacle was as familiar as the gun itself. The Warden turned, grinning, just in time to find himself facing the incoming shell.

The round hit it’s target, missing the Warden by a few inches. Time froze in disbelief at what seemed to be the gunfighter’s second missed shot. Then the round struck the barrel of the oil, just to the left of the XM8, catching it mid-fall. The shell was tipped with red: explosive. The crimson was gone and the world thundered, a different scarlet catching onto the oil spilt across the ground. The gaseous orange blaze igniting on everything in sight, all of it soaked in oil. It followed the trail through the air, crossing like an infernal rainbow and meeting with the rainbow’s end, the Warden.

The Warden’s world turned to hell, it was as though the devil himself had suddenly leapt upon his back. The oil drums, now broken apart from the concussive force of the blast, were also set ablaze. It broke apart behind the Warden, spreading forth like great hellish wings, the Warden himself with his fiery arms stretched to the heavens. The flames wrapped around him, seizing his chest and rippling forth like a malignant stream of dark beauty. The flames burned so bright they totally encased the warden until one blackened claw reached forth from the orange and gold wall. It clawed forth, shadows of a skull nearly breaching the surface of the blaze, eye sockets visible as through a torrid veil. The depths of hell reached forth and pulled it back under, the last specter of the beseeching claw fading into the bright abyss.

Felix turned back to the Black Hawk, where the others had to turn their face away from the inferno. The gunfighter felt the heat against his back as he climbed into through the cargo doors. The four-shooter hung limply from his hand, worn as though all energy had been drained from it into the shot. His head slowly tilted forward and the brim of his hat began to obscure his vision. He was going to push it away when he realized it was not the brim of his hat but rather his own eyelids. He was going to laugh, but he feared he hadn’t the energy, more morally exhausted than physically. The last thing he saw before he fell into the dark recesses of his mind was the brilliant reflection in Teldumor’s onyx eyes, the gaze that had never shied away from the blaze.

Teldumor felt something wash over him, not heat, but something more foreign. He tucked the itchy blanket closer around him, unsure of what he hoped it to shield him from. It couldn’t protect him from what he feared the most, and that thought alone deserved another constricting burial into the uncomfortable fabric. He closed his eyes, wishing not sleep but something more…permanent. He must have been shivering, Lucas bent over and threw his own coat overtop of Teldumor’s blanket.

“Thank you.”

Lucas waved the gratitude away, passing it off as nothing. Teldumor nodded and turned back to the cold night, mountain looming in front of him, the toxic green gas sea frothing beneath him. His shut his eyes as firm as he could, but he couldn’t block the thought from forming within his mind, his own twisted image sitting atop a throne of skulls, wrapped in a black and purple cloak, laughing manically. Ghosts of his own face, contorted into various emotional extremes, seemed to stretch forth from the corners of his head. All consolidated into one and blazing ember eyes seemed to bore into his soul, clutching a golden Nauticus compass rose in one hand, crushing it and warping it like an aluminum can,

“Round Three!”