The clearing was quiet. Deafeningly so. 

Myr could scarcely hear anything over the thunder of her heart and the wordless scream on her lips. 

Even her mind was muddled as she so desperately tried to fathom what she'd just witnessed. 

Ash - her Ash – a monstrously talented yet ultimately weak and soft-hearted fool had with a single swing of his blade just slain a tier five monster. 

As a tier two. 

A danger that could have brought a small town to the brink and smashed apart entire groups of warriors, killed. And he'd made it look easy. 

How? 

She watched his back with an incomprehensible look on her face as he raised his blade again. It was almost laughable, the action. What had the Lord or his attendants to fear from him or his petty blade? And yet, one laid dead from that very sword, and then, somehow, amidst her turbulent thoughts, she dared to wonder which one would fall next. 

The sword was raised to its very apex, its killing edge aglow with sunlight, and then Ash shifted his grip. The angle of the blade turned until it came to face the gargoyle. 

The monster – the one that had slain both Senniaxx and Sylaxxa and a force of the village’s toughest - drew back in fear from a tier two's impossible strength. Its eyes wide, it mustered what little mana must have been left to it still and weaved it into the earth with a speed borne of desperation. The dirt beneath its feet rippled and it began to sink into its embrace. 

It only got as far as its knee before its head parted from its body. Ash lowered his sword, having not even bothered to glance at the creature he had just slain and the dead he had just avenged. 

His eyes were still locked onto the Lord with an unwavering intensity, an attention she realized then that the Lord was reciprocating with equal focus. 

“I shall deign to grant you five minutes, beast, to return to whence you came. Do so and you shan't face my wrath. Ignore this gracious favour and I shall have you serve as my new cloak.” 

Myr nearly choked on her own breath as soon as the words had left his mouth. He was... threatening a Lord of the forest? A tier six legend! What madness was this? What was happening? 

… 

… 

And why was the Lord quiet? It was a prideful beast as all those that straddled its level of power were. How could it remain mute in the face of that insult? More so, it even seemed... hesitant. Wary. 

“You are... not the same. What are you?” Myr goggled at the quiet tone it had chosen to use, one bereft of all the power that had slain dozens of goblins with mere words, and then again at what its words implied. 

“Who I am matters not, creature. What matters is my command. I would bid you to listen to it. I restrain myself out of desire to not overly tax this body, and as a gesture of goodwill towards your King, but that patience has its limits.” 

The King? Ash spoke as if the King of the forest, a divine beast of tier seven, was his equal. 

The chimera chose not to respond, its gaze wandering up and down Ash’s body, as if in desperate search for something that could explain what was happening. It seemed no closer to an answer than Myr herself was. 

“You are powerful. You may even surpass me. But I am not alone, and you are. Can you face both me and my army?” it said, and Myr’s gaze slipped towards the figure that stepped from beneath the shadows of the forest and into the light of the clearing. 

It was a beast, Myr realized, and a powerful one at that, and it wasn’t alone. 

One by one did they appear at first, and then by the handful, and then dozens at a time, until the length of the forest-line swarmed with beasts of all sizes and strengths, their hungry gazes affixed on the threat to their Lord. 

Myr swallowed thickly, a bead of sweat snaking down her sun-kissed skin as she tried to comprehend the scale of the forces arrayed against Ash. 

Her gaze then returned to him to find him imperiously disinterested. “You believe these riff-raff enough to overcome me?” 

“Perhaps not.” was the chimera’s reply, its aura flaring as it took a heavy step forward. “And perhaps so. Would you like to put that question to the test?” 

Ash laughed then, a true, booming noise that she’d never before heard from his lips. 

‘That’s not your laugh.’ she thought with mounting dread. Just what... was in him? 

“Perhaps so.” he repeated with a nod. “But you make a grave mistake, beast.” 

A moment passed and Ash too took a step forward, his face alive with disdain and wroth. “I never claimed to be alone.” 

And then, the sky churned. 

What had been a bright, blue morning grew obscure as a wall of shadow spread across the tree canopy, engulfing all beneath within an absolute darkness. It was such that even Myr with her perception enhanced gaze couldn’t pierce through the pitch blackness. 

A few of the remaining goblins upon the walls cried out in alarm, and others resorted to prayer, their belief and faith already shaken by everything that had happened. But most maintained their silence, military discipline and instinct conjoining to ensure that they tucked in where they were and waited for the worst to pass. 

Myr too huddled down low where she was, choosing to hope for the best in the absence of her senses. 

At least, whatever the darkness was, she was sure Ash had something to do with it. It had come at his command, no doubt, no matter how impossible that was. She knew his nexii and elements, and darkness featured in neither of them. So how? Had he somehow attained the third tier without her knowing of it? But even a third-tier spell likely couldn’t have this suffocating an effect. 

This was something more, like the darkness that had saved them in Totenstrong. 

Whatever its cause, she could only hope that it served her lover well, for she would be useless in the conflict to come. 

“We meet again.” came a voice in the common tongue of humanity. She startled and whirled, her shield raised and her mace readied for an attack that never came. 

“Who ar-” 

“Hush. Watch, but do so quietly. History is in the making.” 

And as if a switch had been flicked, Myr suddenly saw all and more. 

She saw the man stood beside her, his face pale and his eyes scarlet. He struck her as familiar, but she failed to put his face to anything for a few moments until finally, realization dawned. 

“The beggar.” The one they’d met in the city. The one that she’d sent running with a simple application of mana. It was him. He looked less dishevelled, and his eyes were different, but he was the same man. 

And yet so much more. Tier four? Five? 

He smiled at her, amusement evident in his expression, before he gestured that she look towards the clearing. Myr was hesitant to turn away from the stranger, but her desire to check-up on Ash was far stronger than any hesitation, and so she warily glanced to where the youth had stood.  

And he was no longer alone. 

Nearly a dozen beings stood by his side, most human but some not – was that a deniir amongst them? 

She had no clue who they were and how they had slipped into the clearing, but even a simple glance was enough to tell her that they were all powerful. Very powerful. 

Tier four at the least, but likely more. 

Especially that one, a woman more beautiful than any other she'd ever seen before. Her skin was milky white like the moon and her hair as dark as the pitch black around her, but it was her eyes that gripped Myr's attention. 

Red, but not the same red as possessed by the man beside her. Somehow, it was more so, a red deeper than red. Deeper than blood. 

The colour of certain death. 

And the Lord seemed to have felt the same, Myr thought, for its gaze grew dark and its mien far warier than before. 

“You have a minute left of my mercy, beast.” began Ash as he strode forward with an almost lackadaisical disinterest, his sword rising once more. The folk behind him marched forward at his back, a range of expressions and moods apparent on their faces, though Myr did not believe fear to be one of them. 

It was insanity. Ash and a dozen folk against an entire army of ravenous monsters – a veritable beast tide of legend – and it was the beasts that stepped back. 

The Lord's expression grew ugly and for a moment, Myr feared for the worst. A titanic battle with the full wrath of a tier six unleashed would likely see the village decimated, and a sizable chunk of the forest along with it. 

She nor the remaining goblins would have any hope of surviving. 

Fortunately, it never came to pass. The Lord turned on its heels with a final glower and marched right back into the depths it had come from, its army leaving with it. 

Myr blinked in shock, her mind struggling to contain itself after the endless deluge of surprises and emotions that the day had wrought. 

“Wh-what... is he?” she whispered, her blue gaze affixed onto Ash's back. 

It was the beggar who answered, a reverent look on his face. “Our faith. Our future.” 

◆◆◆◆◆ 

Myr was understandably wary as she gathered with the rest of the goblins. Ash stood in the middle of the gathering; his arms crossed as he reigned over it as a King did over his retainers. The strange folk that he’d summoned to his side were mostly gone, having melded into the darkness as if they were themselves shadow, returned to wherever they had come from. The sole exceptions were the beautiful woman, and the beggar, who had both taken position by his either side. 

None of the goblins bothered to look at them. All their eyes were fixed onto Ash himself.  

Each of them there already knew of him by then, if not by name, then by rumour. He along with Myr were the strange tier-two humans that the elder Sylaxxa had brought and housed in the village for reasons known only to her, along with a little goblin youngling. 

They didn’t quite like him, or trust him, but they trusted their honoured elder, and so they’d tolerated him. That estimation had undoubtedly gone up a few notches for the both of them when they'd chosen to stand and fight for the village despite the risks. 

They'd started to like him a twinge more then. 

But now? 

Myr could feel it in the air. 

The goblins no longer liked nor tolerated the human before him. They feared him, for all that he'd saved them all, he was also an unknown. A strangeness beyond description. 

A mere tier two who had staved away certain doom. Was he their saviour then? Or another doom himself? 

That was the question on all their minds, she was sure. It was written plain upon their faces. 

And she wasn’t sure if the truth was a positive one. 

They could only wait to find out. 

It was a few tense minutes later that a group arrived from the village's inner depths. Councillor Cyrillaxxa walked at its head, another two councillors by her sides and a small troop of reserve warriors at their back. 

The council was a group of five, barring the chief, and so Myr wondered why only three of them deigned to show here upon Ash's request. Whatever the reason, she was sure it was deliberate. 

“We have heard and we have come.” Cyrillaxxa's tone was even and her face unreadable as she spoke. If there was any grief or shock there, it was well-hidden by an iron-wall of impassiveness. 

“I believe that you are the one my tribe has to thank for our continued survival.” she continued with a shallow bow towards Ash. “I also believe that you are no longer the affable young man that I met all those days ago.” 

“In a way, no, and in others, yes. This body is his, and his spirit sleeps inside still, but for now, I am in control.” 

An icy hand gripped her heart at the words that left his lips. Ash had been... possessed? Myr clenched her fists tight, her breath growing heavy. She had considered the idea then, when she’d suspected that something was amiss, but to hear it first-hand and admitted to without any fuss. 

She wasn’t sure how she was meant to take it. 

“I see.” replied Cyrillaxxa rather stiffly. “And I do not mean any disrespect with this question, but do you plan to return it to him?” 

“Of course. I do not wish to maintain control indefinitely. A shadow of the past as I am has no right to intrude on the matters of the present. Still, I will remain until I have done everything that needs be done, and first amongst those issues is your village.” 

“This child has grown rather attached to this place, you see, and though I could not care less whether you all live or die, I know that it would be counter-productive to my goals to forcibly separate him from you. So, I gift to you, the leaders of this village, an offer.” 

Whatever the councillor truly thought of the way the conversation was going was kept superbly hidden as a mask of mild interest wove itself across her features. “Oh. Please, do tell.” 

Not-Ash shot her a thinly withering look before he continued with a furrow to his brow. “This forest is in turmoil. Though your tribe has weathered the worst of it with my aid, there still remains more to come. The inner tribes will reweave their nets and the escaped monsters will be slain or captured and partitioned once more until matters return to as they once were.” 

“And when that happens, the game of tribes will begin anew. Tell me, councillors, do you believe that after the deaths of so many of your tribe’s best and strongest, your chief and elder included, that you now have the ability to adequately defend yourselves against your foes?” 

Cyrillaxxa’s expression remained unchanged, though her fellows proved not as skilled in the art of maintaining their features. Even Myr could see the tenseness that set into their features, and the nervous shuffle of their body language. They knew that what Not-Ash had said was the stark truth, no matter how disheartening it was to hear. 

Myr knew it too. She’d lived long enough amongst them to be sure of that, though this was hardly an issue confined to the goblin peoples. Humans too could be vicious to those down on their luck, and perhaps they were more so. At least the goblins would give each other a reprieve, however short, to gather themselves again. 

But an assault would come nonetheless. It was only a matter of when. 

“And how would you see us spared that hardship?” 

“Leave, and join with me.” 

Cyrillaxxa’s gaze narrowed then. It was only a fractional amount, but noticeable still. Her eyes shifted towards the two humans stood by his either side, searching, before they returned to him. 

“And what are you?” 

Not-Ash smiled then, though it was a shallow thing. “A solution to your woes. I have the strength to see your tribe protected, but more. I can see you prosper. Everything that was lost to you on this day, I will see returned ten-fold. More.” 

“That is a grand claim.” stated the councillor rather diplomatically. 

“It is a promise.” countered Not-Ash, his eyes wide but in them she saw true earnestness. “Do not believe in my words, goblins of Everwatch! Do not believe in my promises! Believe in my power! The power that sent a tier-six running like a whipped dog! A power that your elder foresaw, and chose to stake everything in.” 

Now that managed a crack in Cyrillaxxa’s countenance. In fact, it affected every goblin who heard it, their eyes wide and their faces slack with shock. 

“She... knew of you.” 

“Indeed. She prophesized my coming after all, did she not. A saviour from the coming doom.” 

“The council was informed, but when we learnt that the prophesized one was a mere tier two... well, prophecies have proven wrong before in my people’s past.” 

“Not on this day. She knew not how, but she knew that the fate of your tribe laid in my hands. And it still does. You may have survived the Lord, but will you allow yourselves to be picked and torn apart by the crows that will descend upon you?” 

There was a silence there, one that knew that what Not-Ash had said was the truth. 

“The choice is yours to make. You have a day. Until then, I have other matters to attend to.” 

He turned from then, his stride regal, as if he already owned the dirt he walked on. The councillors watched him walk deeper into their village and found themselves helpless to stop him. Not against a power of his level. 

“Where are you going?” one still dared to ask. 

“To find the child this boy calls his own.” Not-Ash paused then, his gaze snapped towards Myr with a focus that froze her where she stood. She saw a mixture of emotions in those eyes from disinterest to a faint approval, before he finally spoke. “You as well, come. He would not like you to be left behind.” 

She could not hope to disobey.