Redmane shunted aside the gazes of a hundred pairs of eyes, in favor of four. And in his mind, the map of this long forgotten city grew downward into the earth.

  His spawn descended at a uniform rate, their paths twisting together from the north, south, east and west to converge in a massive cavern deep beneath the city.

  It was near.

  He could feel the power of it growing more intense. Palpable in the air.

  The strongest aura he had yet felt from a Seal. Fitting, he supposed. For it would be the last.

  But in all other ways it matched its four counterparts. A ring of pillars, constructed from bone etched with glowing runes, which contained a field of roiling energy. There was one noticeable difference, however. The sheer vastness of this cavern. A second city could have been built down here, just upon the circular mesa where the Seal sat alone. Black waters surrounded that mesa, a subterranean sea branching into underground rivers going north, southwest and east.

  Part of him wanted to make haste to the Seal, and engage with its guardian now.

  But if Vos were to discover his location during that struggle, things could take a dangerous turn.

  The prudent thing to do would be to engage one foe at a time. Or perhaps it would be wiser to entangle all his enemies at the simulaneously, occupy them with distractions so he could proceed undisturbed to this. The true objective.

  But then an even better idea presented itself.

  Pietr.

  My lord! How fares your journey!

  I’ve arrived, but there’s a problem.

  Ah… Well, elucidate me. How may we be of assistance?

  You’ll need to gather everyone. And quickly.

  Vos had a seat at the lip of the Abyssal Well. Legs folded, back straight.

  He was here.

  The sentinels were awake.

  The presence of their master, their maker, had not disturbed them. Only an intruder would have made them rise, and there was only one reason an intruder would be here, in this place, at this time.

  He drew a breath in, slowly filling his lungs, and reached out with his mighty senses.

  Father’s presence was everywhere.

  It was all over the city, scattered, moving about like a colony of ants.

  His perception of it was immediate, and dismaying. Like opening the cupboard door to find it swarming with pests. Despite their careful preparation, the lengths they gone to, to ensure this exact situation would never happen, it had all come to naught. The Lord of Hunger would keep finding itself, again and again, it would always gather together in its carnivorous fever and set to devouring everything in its path.

  He knew its purpose well, for he had crafted it himself.

  But he should have never entrusted the safekeeping of such a thing to mortals. He knew that now.

  Vos, the First Sovereign, would never sleep again.

  He waited, and watched. Hoping only that father hadn’t yet discovered what he was looking for. What lay hidden beneath Eugorid. There were four entrances to the catacombs, so he placed his attention upon those and awaited the first sign of something approaching it.

  No sooner did he do so did he sense it. A clump of those small fragments of father’s will, coming together, coalescing into something the rough size and shape of a man.

  Vos opened his eyes.

  He reached out and called God Cutter to his hand, and it appeared in a flash of gold.

  “Remain here,” he said to the mortals he had rescued from father’s Soulspace. “Guard the Well.”

  He translocated in a blaze of golden fire.

  Aric Morholt opened his mouth to object, but Vos was gone before he could get a word out.

  “Damn…”

  He glanced at the Abyssal Well. Shuddered. The memory of being down there made his skin crawl. Now they had to guard it? From who?

  His cousin Aerin came over and sat down at the lip of the well, near where Vos had been sitting before he vanished. He peered into the black waters curiously, and as Aric watched him he couldn’t help but feel resentment that Vos had mended his broken mind.

  He liked Aerin better when he was a mumbling invalid.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It was what he deserved.

  “Feels like big things are in motion,” said Aerin. “Monumental things. Strange to find oneself a part of it.”

  Aric kept a sneer off his face, barely. But contempt for Aerin roiled for in his guts. That he should have the audacity to try and speak to him like they were comrades.

  “Indeed,” he said, curtly.

  The terrible irony of being damned, and then saved, and imbued with divine power, only to be stuck with this ape for all time.

  Aerin looked at his cousin. “What do you suppose is going to happen?”

  He shrugged. “Whatever happens.”

  “You’re not interested?”

  “We have no stake in any of it. Except for that which our new master decides for us.”

  Aerin frowned thoughtfully and nodded. Still ignorant to the hostility Aric could have sworn was radiating off of him like the glow of a bonfire. The elder Morholt returned his gaze to the dark, still waters of the Well from whence they had emerged.

  “There will always be masters. Best to serve them with distinction, and if they’re just, your service will be fairly rewarded.”

  Aric didn’t know if Vos, the so called First Sovereign, was a just soul.

  He barely knew anything about him. Only time could tell what their ultimate fate would be.

  Whatever it was, it was better than an eternity sitting in an endless field of corpses.

  Something drew Aerin’s attention sharply. His eyes shifted to the center of the Well, and Aric’s gaze followed it.

  A ripple emanated from the center of the Well. Then another.

  Then the water bulged, as something began to emerge from the Abyss.

  Pietr listened carefully to his instructions, and executed them in haste.

  He gathered them all together. Everyone. The Imbued of House Redmane, and all those others whom the System could not or would not recognize. The Monsters. The beastmen. The demi-humans.

  All the peoples of Volos, all of whom had a stake in the outcome of this day’s conflict.

  Since lord Redmane had prudently left spawn throughout his domain, communication took place with satisfying speed.

  He reached his old friends Berek and Waldemar, who still tended their flock of beastmen in the town of Barograd.

  Next came the Warg lord Redmane had called Ash, in Midva Forest.

  He reached Valtr, Vengarl, Irina, Radovid and Vella, in Morazan Valley.

  Then Krum of Asgoph, the Magister Evelina, and the two knights at Beroh Keep, Ser Velibor and Ser Grimgarl.

  Vang sought out his old clan in the Skalla Mountains. The demi-human chief also spoke to King Edd, and his boar friends.

  There was the one called Kard and the remainder of his tribe, whom lord Redmane had met on his way to the Seal of the Kirin.

  Gale, the Ice Warg, returned to speak to his kin in the Fangs of Frost.

  Many of these groups were already blade to blade with the Numantians spreading across Volos. When they all vanished from the battlefield, the enemy would surely notice.

  Which, too, was a part of the plan…

  Jarel Craith had recovered enough.

  He’d bathed and changed robes, consumed elixirs and salved his skin with unguents, and taken as much rest as his mind and its unwanted residents would allow.

  Now he sat, chin rested on his fist, and stared at the atlas of Volos with unblinking eyes, drumming the fingertips of his other hand against the table. Redmane would resurface again if he wanted to save his allies. It was only a matter of time.

  General Fabian was tightening the noose. The domain of House Redmane was now surrounded from every side, with reinforcements building in the rear of every front. And the forces with which they contended were barely holding out as it was. Soon they would be utterly overwhelmed.

  Jarel’s eyes flicked from unit to unit, hawkishly. Waiting for the spontaneous disappearance of a war engine or a squad of soldiers, as had happened in Midva Forest.

  But nothing out of the ordinary took place. Occasionally a unit would be vanquished by an adjacent enemy unit, per the norm. But if Redmane was covertly assisting units already engaged, he was going about it foolishly.

  Because they were losing. Soon they would be losing badly.

  A unit winked out, and Jarel’s eyes snapped right to its location.

  It was… An enemy unit. A group of renegade Imbued.

  Another disappeared, elsewhere on the map. There were no Numantian forces anywhere near it. Then another, and another.

  Jarel Craith held his breath. His eyes fixed on the whole of the atlas, zoomed out so he could see everything. More and more enemy units vanished from the theater of battle. But then a blip drew his attention to a largely unoccupied area on the southeast edge of the continent.

  With a jolt, Jarel understood what was happening.

  They weren’t vanishing. They were moving.

  They were all moving to the same location.

  Abyssal travel. It had to be.

  It had to be Redmane.

  Jarel didn’t care if this was a trap. He’d walk right into it, smash the trap to pieces and slay the trapper.

  As he strode out of the command tent to meet with General Fabian, two presences in back of Jarel Craith’s mind quietly savored the fruits of their handiwork.

  Redmane watched his decoy gather together near the entrance to the stairs. It was made of spawn he’d recalled, and he bid it take its time in re-forming into something new. The ultimate form would be roughly the size of the average demi-human.

  But he had a feeling it wouldn’t make it to its ultimate form.

  There was a flash of golden flame. A blade glinted in the sunset’s light, and descended.

  It chopped the poor thing in half.

  “I had a feeling that was how you would greet me,” said Redmane, from behind him.

  Vos already knew.

  He was looking down at the spawn, cursing his haste.

  The First Sovereign turned and held the point of his golden sword toward Redmane as he walked out of the shadows.

  Redmane felt a familiar power emanating from it.

  “I see you forged a replacement,” said Redmane.

  “This one will cut you into finer pieces than the last.”

  Vos charged. To the mortal eye he simply vanished, but Redmane could see him.

  Two gods clashed, blade against claw, and the blast of their collision swept the streets of the city clean of sand for hundreds of yards.

  The same happened upon their next exchange, and the next, creating circular patches of clean black streets and buildings, if viewed from above. It even shrived clean the lumbering Eugorid Sentinels.

  Their battle at Vos’s tomb in Asgoph was like a pair of children dueling with wooden swords, compared to this.

  Redmane, so close to realizing the completeness of his former power.

  Vos, fully awake from his long torpor.

  The world of Volos had not felt two of its own gods in battle for eons. The ground shook when they met, as if it were trembling with fear.

  “It was foolish to reveal yourself,” said Vos, as his blade rang against a curved blade of bone.

  “It was necessary,” said Redmane. “I had to show you something.”

  Vos’s brows drew together.

  Redmane imagined his son thought he was trying to trick him somehow.

  But then, all around them, the air sizzled.

  Points of crackling light formed in a rough ring around the perimeter of the city. And men, or what looked like men, in silver armor and blue cloaks emerged from those shimmering rifts in rank and file, wielding weapons of gleaming Star-Steel.

  “What is this…”

  “This is why I’m here,” said Redmane. “To take my power back. Because there’s something new on our doorstep.”

  Vos looked over at his father, and Redmane returned his intense gaze with a dour smile.

  “Something worse than me.”

  PATREON