The reality of Extirpation’s wretched war was that on many occasions there was joy to lure our eyes and hearts away from the turmoil and destruction. Two days after the battle at Nuracimens, when the symptoms of my ensorcelling had begun to wane and I was once more lucid, I had cause for joy; it was of utmost fortune that, Misonos, the heroic paladin of Mentillian who had saved the Kalipaonin regiment from assured defeat was accompanied by his squire: Yngiunian, my betrothed. I remember clearly the words he spoke to me when we reunited.
“Nayinian, I dared not sleep much on the journey eastward. I was so afraid that I might die in an ambush, and be separated from you forever.” I knew that Ynguinian did not exaggerate or speak in metaphors when he said he feared death, for Ynguinian would never lie to me. Such was the nature of his soul, and his love.
“Ynguinian,” I said “you could die a thousand deaths, and still I would find a way to reunite myself with you.”
For several days, the freshly reinforced Kalipaonin regiment celebrated our victory with reckless revelry. Even Carinon was in high spirits after our victory, and back to her normal self. Ynguinian offered that, perhaps, Misonos’s presence had restored her mind to order, after what she had done at the battle of Huroncenth. Afterall, such a boon was seemingly within the limits of what Paladin of Order could produce. If only it were so simple. Having been married to Ghalos for many years now, and having drank of The First Yew I know better the limits of magicks, gods, and spells. The mind is an uncertain place, sometimes not even understood by its controller.
Still, I cannot fault Misonos or Carinon for what was to come. The war was everything. Promises of peace clouded our judgments and pushed us to recklessness, and both sides paid dearly for it. Thousands of Junumianians, dead. Thousands of Moringians, dead. Thousands of Harinians, my parents, my village, all dead. Countless artifacts lost to the hungry maw of violence. ‘
And such it still continues, for I have shown you that the world has begun to forget color. And you know that from your crops Nature has begun to wither, Prosperity is a sliver of its former glory, and your village cannot trust that all men and women who come through are of virtuous intent. Even those called upon by gods.
Do you not find it strange that I, and not my husband, was the one called to you village? That your prayers went unanswered for moons upon moons? That the earth itself would wish you and your own dead?
Does it not bother you that the name this village once held floats in the back of your head like the fingers of a fine mist? You understand what your village is, but not what it once was? That, despite your entire life spent in the shadow of the gray spine, you all woke up and suddenly this village lost its name?
The enemy. Extirpation. He has taken much from this world, and I beg you to believe me: he will take from you too. He will take those you love, your hopes, your dreams, fortune, livelihood, and tradition until all that is left is desperation without hope. And then, this world shall not Decay, but simply cease. Its mana and its gods consumed.
That wretched war is where this woe began. The source of the plague of which has infested your village. But you do not care for such things beyond your village, for it is hard to imagine such things for those of you who have never left your safe borders for the lands lorded by disintegrating empires.
Our mages, mostly, restored to health. And though I still was in no position to cast spells, I was content to have my betrothed with me. Even when Ynguinian’s duties kept his attention mostly elsewhere, it was comforting to know that this war would soon end, and I would be married.
Carinon, in the days following Misonos and Ynguinian’s arrival, was of a sound mind to return to her camp and strategic duties entirely. Her and Nestyne had began work on a new golem, this one constructed of obsidian. Corindrian had provided the volcanic glass, as his mastery of flows was not limited to water, but to many liquid things including that of molten rock. Yet, his knowledge of the earth was not to such a great degree as Nestyne’s, who had to help the Master of Flows in making the spell brief enough to cast within the period of an hour.
Therefore, until the golem was completed, Quatimonian’s war magicks were limited to a few lesser spells, and I could still not cast for fear of causing harm to myself. Misonos, although his oath was powerful, could only be a sparing resource for the regiment. For the more the paladin tried to hold upon order, the more risk his requests of the divine would bring his voice to Decay. Any attack by the Junumianis, then, would have to be fended off mostly by Nestyne and Carinon.
And that is precisely what happened. Having tarried in Nuracimens, the Kalipaonin regiment marched eastwards once more. Towards Khulinara, a Junuminian city nestled within a vast and green valley. Or rather, the valley would have been verdant were it not for the corruption the war had sowed within the land, and now had come to reap.
Dead trees grasped for sunlight among shrouded banks of fog and polluted waters. The devastated forests were laden with petrified thorns and stinging nettles so thick that a grown man could hide in plain sight mere feet away from passing soldiers without notice. And so, doing what was of good wisdom, it was decided that our army would detour to a more open pass, for an ambush among those trees would be devastating. Especially since we had no intelligence on what had become of the Junumianian summoner. Why had he not fought with the necromancer and the fire mage and Nuracimens? Woe was about to give us our answer.
Coming through the northerly pass into the valley of Khulinara, our army marched in a wide file to ensure retreat could come easy. All officers were on horseback (and foolishly, I had decided that Ynguinian and myself could share a mount) in the event of a sudden ambush. The shrieks, although repelled at Nuracimens, presented a fatal tool in the hands of the depraved necromancer.
Suddenly, from a great distance from a treeline an arrow shot at the speed of thunder, landing near the fight of Quatimonian’s horse and throwing a massive upheaval of dirt. The arrow had been enchanted, and an archery assault began as Junumianian forces appeared in the high ground to the left of the pass. The only options were to run, or to charge. And, for it was a war of greed and power, the Kalipaonin charged recklessly into the fray.
The rhythm of the war drums pulsed through our forces with an ancient rage of a tormented beast. Our savagery would not let this guile be unpunished. Briefly, Nestyne considered unleashing his obsidian golem, but decided against it. He knew it would make short work of Khulinara, the rain of arrows (especially with the sorts of enchantments we had seen) would make activating far too risky for our long term strategy: breach the empire, protect our mages, spare our magicks.
And so, Nestyne instead requested Carinon to enchant the air around us, to lessen the velocity of the arrows to that of a glacier’s pace. Which the enchanter could do with ease. Now our collection of mages ran up the hillside amidst the vespertine formation of arrowfall, seemingly safe from the brunt of the attack.
So coordinated our ascension up the hillside was, that even the appearance of the fire mage presented little quandary. Carinon effortlessly dismissed the mage’s spells, which gave the impression that, perhaps, the Junumianian mage was not at full capacity, for the fires did not burn as hot, nor approach as quickly. I remember believing I could have reversed the spells if I so desired, for they seemed to straightforward. And this was exactly the point. The attack was a lure.
Suddenly, an arrow broke through Carinon’s slowing enchantment at an impossible velocity, striking Quatimonian in his leg and off of his horse. Carinon froze when she saw the blood and the pain on the Master of Flows face. He was caught in pure agony. And then, looking backwards to the rest of our forces we realized our tactical error. And why the Junumianian summoner had been missing for so long.
Towards the downward slope, the ground began to recede back like a massive wave. The earth retched in a great quake as the lowlands arched hundreds of feet tall began to coalesce and slant over the bulk of our supply, archery, and officers. A great wave of earth, seemingly taller and wider than the wave of legend that had nearly destroyed the great witch-queen Harwyne of Kalynth, arched with intent to crash upon us. So large this wave was, I briefly believed that it dwarfed the distance Ghalstorin had climbed when he thrust his sword into the tapestry of night to create the stars.
And the Master of Flows had no countermagicks. And Carinon had frozen, her mind once more in disrepair. And so powerful this wave was Misonos could not conjure order out of its chaos, for it held a fury of disorder only known to Nature’s wrath, and that of Extirpation for it consumed greedily the dirt, the dust, dead men, living men, the polluted soil, desecrated Nature; all within in its deathly trajectory..
I dug through my muddle mind to level counterspells in desperation, but none of the spells I threw against the encroaching wall of churning earth could muster enough strength to even abate its flow. The tragic truth was apparent: I was the Master of Subtlety, and no subtle magicks would stymy the spell that would soon devour our forces.
The Junumianian summoner must have worked years on this spell and the preliminary achievements. Somehow, in the time between winter in Icinereth and the battle of Nuracimens the summoner had created this impossible feat of sorcery. But how? How could such a thing be possible? Yes, Junumianian sorcerers had an understanding of the earth in much the same way that Corindrian had understood weather, Quatimonian waves, Carinon enchantments, or Nestyne the creation of golems. But, even such a spell would have to be the result of a team of late master wizards and a native understanding of the first language.
And so, Carinon, Ynguinian, Misonos, and I watched in horror as we could do nothing to stop the slaughter. Quatimonian writhed on the ground like a dying snake. Nestyne, however, would not stand for it.
The summoner steadied his shaking hands, and I saw a cold fury in his eyes. I recounted the story of how Nestyne had injured himself in a desperate countermagicks.
I understood him completely, at that moment. I knew the anxiety of a greenhorn before he ever drew blood. I recounted the chaos and the fear that paralyzed me when I had thrown my first real countermagicks at the battle. I felt Nestnye’s guilt for the four thousand days of lonely violence he had been gifted with, a gift given simply because he had been the only one lucky enough to survive. At that moment, as the Great Earthen Wave of Khulinara extend wide its earthen jaws, I understood completely why Nestyne had to do it.
This was the Nestyne, who had helped to revise and hone the countermagicks of dozens of mages for nearly two decades in the Moringian. This was the same Nestyne who had cared for Quatimonian, Carinon, and myself as if we were his brood. The same Nestyne who held a magickal talent so superb, that if his spells were not limited by his injuries, he would have rivaled Corindrian in power. The same Nestyne who had taught himself the first language from rote memorization, simply because he loved magicks.
Nestyne thrusted his palms into the earth, and spoke true three perfect words in the first language. Their meaning was so precise and so true, that all on the battlefield could have understood what Nestyne had just yelled at the rolling wave of death.
“Never! Again! Cur!”
The hillside shot up, throwing all men to the ground. In howl of agony, Nestyne thrust a new mountain into existence from the earth. Hundreds of feet below, the wave crashed against the sheer cliffside. The Kalipaonin regiment was saved. Nestyne collapsed to the ground, his skin cracked with fissures the leaked a fine red. His skin had turned entirely to stone. His hands had crumbled into dust. Literally, they too were stone.
“Victory. And at what cost?” Nestyne said. And then he paid the price of stories.
