Of all the tribunals that Erebus had faced, and there had been more than his fair share, this would perhaps be the hardest. Temporal authority had always been an easy thing to face down, their expectations no weight at all, their ire the dullest of blades. The judgement of his friends however was proving a heavy weight indeed and one he could not, as he so often, too often, had, overcome by force.

There was a rhythm to a good reveal the necromancer knew, it was important not to bombard the recipient with too much information at once, to let the facts linger and settle before breaking fresh ground, and they had a lot ground to cover.

“Normally with events such as these I’d start at the beginning,” He began, taking all his doubt, uncertainty and fear and shoving it aside forcefully, “however in light of last night’s events I suppose I should begin with how we all survived as well as commend Holly for her part in achieving this happy state of affairs, I’m aware it was not easy having the bond under such constant strain.

“I’ll be quite honest, I did suspect chronomancy before we arrived in Valda. It was one of four possible options I believed could swallow so many mages of such a calibre without trace. The key to our survival was the barrier. I noticed that it only seemed to seal itself against a person once they had fully crossed over and was thus only able to affect distinct and whole entities.

“By having Holly on one side of the barrier and Alec on the other, part of Holly’s soul never crossed through and therefore when Evan reset the loop the spell found itself having to deal with an entity it could not properly parse. Evan, having never conceived of such an edge case, and having never had formal training in chronomancy, had not designed the spell to handle an exception to its criteria and it expended itself in its entirety trying to solve the problem and, as temporal magic is want to do collapsed as if it had never happened. Any questions?”

“I’ve got one.” Amara began, “Why in Vulcanus’ sacred name didn’t you tell us we weren’t in danger? I was convinced we were going to die!”

“It had to seem real.” Natalya concluded, “If we weren’t scared Evan might have suspected he’d been outplayed and that his trump card was useless. He’d had what…. four, five hundred years to train himself with no regard to ethics? He could probably have faced down an archmage if he’d had to. You saw what he did to Mill.”

“Why didn’t he do the same to us?” Holly asked bemusedly, “If he can just make people drop like that…”

“Oh he tried.” Erebus said with a laugh, Natalya nodding along, “Nat and I are skilled enough healers that we can counter dread healing, Amara’s a vampire, Lana’s a demon, you’re a dryad, Alice is downright immune to healing magic and Susan… even I don’t how to heal Sue.”

“Hell of a gamble though,” Lana mused, “You had no way of knowing he’d lead with chronomancy.”

If Natalya had had a drink she’d have snorted it out of her nose with laughter, “Of course he did. Why risk a fight with mages of unknown power when you can just press the ‘I win’ button? You’ve got a lot to learn about people demon. It’s why he more or less went to pieces straight afterwards, he pulled out a spell not seen since the gods were still alive and we more or less ignored it. From his perspective that would have been terrifying.”

“Almost as terrifying as him pulling out that spell in the first place.” Amara groused.

“That’s the long and short of it,” Their fearless leader admitted, “if Evan had thought for even a moment that we might be able to beat his time loop he’d have made a fight of it and if he’d killed Holly then we all died. Now to the important things. Let’s start with the prophecy.”

“Before you start with dire portents of doom, how do we know it’s real?” Natalya demanded, not unreasonably, fake prophets, seers and soothsayers were practically an industry in themselves.

“Well it was cast by three retired archmages and they showed me the artifact they detonated to pierce the skin of time.” Erebus said, it was close enough to the truth. “And the voice was… well let’s just say it stuck in the mind in ways I’m not entirely comfortable with.”

“Their voice does that.” Lana growled, “My master finds the choir of The Duality quite grating.”

“The Duality?” Natalya inquired politely though there was certainly a tad more than professional interest there. “Another imperator?”

The demoness laughed, “Not even close, they could crush my Lady as if she were a gnat if they had the inclination. Though they’re seldom inclined to do anything.”

Before Natalya could get more irate at the not-quite-an-answer, Erebus intervened, “They go by many names Nat. You’d know him best as Fate. Only Fate can speak in the voice of true prophecy.”

“And only Luck can break it.” Lana added solemnly, glancing up at the sky as with fear that she might have drawn her attention. “The green-eyed one is a being at great conflict with themselves yet perfectly in balance as well.”

“I feel like I should argue there but I frankly haven’t the energy.” Natalya conceded, “So what was in this prophecy?”

Erebus nodded once took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn’t his voice that came out, and going from the sudden alarm in his eyes that wasn’t something he’d planned at all.

“The last of the first shall come to sun’s aegis to weep her final tears.

The mother of statues shall be reborn by the blood of the dreamer.

All doors shall shut and all foes forsworn as the new blade shatters.

Then the chains shall tremble, the chains may break, for they were doomed in the chainbreaker’s death.

When the painting slew the painter and their legacy became liars duty

Yet should the last chain fall then darkness shall rise

Eternal enemy, annihilator, corruptor, the siblings of the first gods shall have their silence.”

As the words came to a close Erebus rubbed concernedly at his throat before adding, in his own voice, “I see what Pheus meant, that is distinctly uncomfortable.”

“It also sounded like gibberish, have you got a translation for those of us who don’t speak fluent riddle?” Naturally it was Nat asking the question.

“Something will wipe out Seruatis and then the rest of the world because I died.” Erebus declared, blunt as a hammer to the skull.

“How in the hells do you get that out of it?” Alice snorted, shaking her head.

“I have it on good authority that sun’s aegis is Seruatis itself and that I am, apparently, the chainbreaker. Who here knows what an aetheric chain is?”

Lana raised a hand, smirking, as well as, somewhat surprisingly, Amara and Alec. That certainly got the teenager shocked stares, even from Erebus.

“What?” Alec snapped defensively, shrinking under their combined gazes, “It was in the Seruatis library.”

There was a loud smack as Erebus’ face met the heel of his hand, “Okay. Moving past the fact I need to have a long discussion with Dus about appropriate reading materials for young mages-in-training, aetheric chains are… let’s start with divine artifacts. Every single one of them was handcrafted by a divine being and they enforce a rule. Could be anything from ‘cheese is delicious’ to ‘seventh sons are unnaturally strong with magic’ to ‘elves are haughty’, the point is that as long as the chain exists that rule simply is.”

“That’s impossible.” Natalya retorted, “That would mean…”

“-that free will is more or less a concept we came up with to delude ourselves?” Erebus suggested gently, “That we have spent our entire lives dancing like puppets to unseen strings? That we may never have made a genuine choice in our entire lives? There’s a reason these things haven’t been made common knowledge. Forget the panic. Imagine the nihilism.”

“Why haven’t they been destroyed?” The other necromancer demanded, “I thought you of all people-“

“Why do you think I’m the chainbreaker in the prophecy? Apparently I hold the record, and that record isn’t impressive. Just three.”

“They’re important aren’t they?” Alice asked slowly, steel gaze softened by quiet thoughtfulness. “That’s why breaking them ends the world.”

“Some of them are.” Erebus admitted, “You’ve got some frankly evil ones, literally one of the ones that got broken, not by me, is that ‘people worship gods’. The Martyr broke that one. But some of the others do things like set the magical properties of sunlight and the speed of sound so visiting devils and sidhe can’t alter them. For all they were designed to ensure a race of malevolent super-beings ruled indefinitely, they were actually a step away from ‘might makes right’ believe it or not. Sad but true.”

“What were the ones you broke?” Holly asked curiosity fighting with the sudden, overwhelming reminders that she was a very small fish in a very, very big pond.

“Necromancers are obsessed with immortality, dwarves live underground and elves live in forests. The last two are almost pointless I’m afraid, not a dwarf lives in this world or any other and like all the long-lived the elves are slow to change.” Erebus raised his hands in frustrated defeat.

“How hard was it?” Natalya demanded, steel in her voice.

“Hard to find, harder to identify what the chain did and guarded so well you’d have better luck fighting to the fifth floor of the Wraith Vault. In fact I’m almost certain there’s more than one chain at the bottom, and that’s if the enchantment that maintains it isn’t in fact a chain. But to answer your real question, each was the work of years and even with meticulous planning I nearly died. That’s not including the chains I found that I chose not to destroy, and who’s defences I then had to re-erect.”

“Why would you-?” His erstwhile mentor began.

“They don’t exactly come labelled. I was unfortunate enough to stumble across one of the Leviathan Chains, you remember about twenty years ago where I just disappeared for two years? I was putting the defences back on that one. I’d like to think I did a good job. I hope I did, for all our sakes.”

“Why do I have a worrying feeling I know what a Leviathan Chain does?” Alice asked, a visible shiver running through her though it could have just been the cold morning air.

“Because you’re not an idiot.” Lana told her flatly. “There’s not a god, sidhe or imperator that would touch the Leviathan Chains.”

“They stop the leviathans from being able to leave the water. Lest they pull themselves from the ocean to devour all that lives on land.” Erebus explained, “I’m given to understand they’re the only chain the gods regarded as important enough to get redundancies.”

“What are leviathans?” Alec asked, though only after a sharp elbow from Holly told him in no uncertain terms it was his turn to jump on this particular grenade.

“Death.” Lana answered, the demoness didn’t seem to have a tone that was less than deadly serious but somehow she managed to make the pronouncement particularly grave. “Just death. The death of dragons. The death of selkies. The death of a hundred peoples. The death of imperator and of god. Stay away from the ocean child, only fools and madmen sail the seas while they yet live.”

“A touch melodramatic but essentially correct.” Erebus echoed, “To my knowledge no one and nothing has ever killed a leviathan, because nothing can bring to bear the sheer power needed to kill something of their size. The smallest is seventeen miles long as is nicknamed The Runt and their hunger is without end.”

“Size is an incredible weapon and an equally fearsome defence.” Alice agreed, “I’m the only warshifter currently in circulation but I heard that once there were seven of us alive at once, and bravely or foolishly we tried to kill The Runt, the least of them. We had backing from pretty much every order, nation or circle you could put a name to, paladin or mage. No less than three Immortals stood with us. The Runt ate well that day.”

“Okay so some of the chains are important.” Natalya conceded. “How does your dying doom everything?”

“I don’t know.” Erebus admitted, “Neither did the archmages who created the prophecy. If they’d had their way I’d have stayed behind the barrier of Seruatis until the end of time.”

“Maybe you should have.” It was Ilvere who’d spoken up, “I’m not ungrateful for being saved, but this is the fate of the world we’re talking about.”

“Aye it is.” The necromancer acknowledged, “But there is hope in the prophecy as well. The chains may break. And only if the last one falls does darkness rise. I’m going to die. That’s the one certainty, and it was every bit as certain before the prophecy was spoken as after it. That’s what happens, everything breaks eventually. I’m not going to spend that time cowering in whatever hermetically sealed chamber Seruatis can devise.”

“And a thousand piece jigsaw slots into beautiful place.” Natalya whispered, eyes gleaming with triumph and just a little bit of pride at her protégé’s audacity. “So what are you attacking first?”

“Wait- attacking- what?” Amara spluttered.

“I don’t approve.” Lana stated, “My duty is to keep you safe my necromancer, you will make this difficult in the path you pursue. I thought you sought a place of safety but I defer to your boon companion on your intent.”

Alice just smirked, as if she’d known this was going to happen all along. Because she had. She suspected Sato had also known, not out of any foresight or magic but just from the set in their friend’s jaw and the pain in his eyes.

Holly and Alec too were unsurprised, the Erebus they knew was not one to lay idle and besides they too had heard the prophecy and though they had not placed Erebus as the chainbreaker they had certainly figured out it was a prophecy of apocalypse, and their mentor would never stand back from such a thing.

“I’m going to die.” Erebus repeated, “Nothing can change that. What I can do is prepare the ground for when I’m gone so that this world has the best possible chance of surviving. I won’t order you to follow me, this work is going to be as deadly as any I’ve undertaken, but I will ask you, please, help me give Reath a fighting chance.”

“I’m in.” Susan declared almost immediately, to noone’s surprise.

“Give me a fight worth dying for and I’ll march with you out into the Great Void itself.” Alice assured him, resting a hand on his shoulder, “Let old Death herself quake in our path.”

“We’re in.” Holly and Alec declared in unison, stepping forwards.

“Absolutely not!” Six voices echoed back with even greater unity.

It was Alec who stepped forwards to make their case, “I know we’re not experienced, or knowledgeable, or helpful… um… I’m not exactly helping our case here am I? But my point is that for all what you’re about to do is dangerous so is ditching us here. If someone figures out you’re based here and comes looking… Holly and I cannot fight them off. The way I see it if we’re with you guys at least we’ll always have a chance, and we’re learning, we’re getting better, and without us you’d have been killed by Evan so…?” His voice trailed off on a hopeful note.

“No. You’re staying safe here with Ilvere.” Erebus stated with the finality of an executioner’s axe.

“Actually I was going to offer to come with you as well.” Ilvere piped up.

There was a pause punctuated by the sound of Erebus’s palm impacting his forehead, fingers raking slowly down his face in exasperation. “You’ve got people you’re sworn to care for.”

The geomancer nodded, smile a little brittle but there all the same, “And if the world ends they die too right? I’m not a hero… but John was, and he can’t go with you now, so I will.”

“Abyss protect me from apprentices with good intentions.” The necromancer grumbled, but his heart just wasn’t in it. “Fine. Fine! But you all do what you’re told, when you’re told. I mean it, I know I normally invite questions but when we’re out there your response to an order cannot be ‘why?’ Clear?”

“Crystal, sir.” Ilvere said, giving him a salute that was centuries out of date.

“That goes double for us.” Alec promised, copying the salute as best he could.

With a drawn out sigh Erebus turned his gaze to the remaining mages.

“Well I can’t have a bunch of kids making me look bad.” Amara joked, “I’m in, though I’d be really grateful if getting the assassins off my back was part of laying the groundwork.”

Lana met Erebus’ gaze with something close to defiance, “This is the dumbest plan I’ve heard and I was alive when the gods had the idea to create gatling hornets. So I’d better make sure you don’t get killed doing it.”

All eyes were on the last of them, Natalya unperturbed as she thought it over, not prepared to take the decision lightly. “I’ve got a daughter…” She began, startling absolutely all of them. “she’s just started at the Necropolis, and the thought of her growing up without me… she doesn’t have anyone else… it fills me with nothing but dread. But better that than she doesn’t get to grow up at all. I’m in. Where do we attack first?”

 

*

 

The first attack came without warning and it came without mercy. Many dismissed dryads as gossipy and rather harmless as long as you didn’t offend the dryad of the forest herself. Those people had yet to realise that the most dangerous thing a person could do sometimes was talk.

Beneath the soil lay a complicated network of fungus that trees, even dryadless ones, used to communicate and sometimes exchange resources when times were hard. Noone was entirely sure what was being said normally. In this instance however the first blow was struck when Twisted Hawthorn spoke to Apple the Kind, just thirty miles from the forest’s edge, her will having to reach far through those thin mycelial strands.

Well less spoke and more threatened, the fungus that had twined its way around the younger dryad’s roots biting deep as it began to draw the water from her tree as Hawthorn gave her her orders.

Apple had never so much as raised a branch in violence, never enforced her will on anything not even the trees that surrounded her and it was easy enough for Hawthorn, who had clawed and fought every day of her life with the trees around her for more light, more nutrients and more space to sweep her influence over the fungus in the soil aside.

Faced with death or compliance, Apple, who had guarded her orchard for generations, who loved and cherished every person who had toiled to turn her little forest into one of the great breadbaskets of the Paladin Order, submitted and cried as she did so.

Every apple that grew in the orchard was a luscious golden skinned fruit, rich in sugar and crunchy, a prized delicacy that travelled far and wide. The wagons that came and went from the farm never stopped, not even in the grip of winter.

For three days every apple that left the farm had been subtly altered, the skins on the seeds nonexistent as concentrated cyanide leeched through into the sweet flesh with every passing moment. It was a subtle thing, no one on the farm would ever suspect a thing given the fruits eaten there would still be fit to eat, by the time they made market however…

The death toll was in the hundreds and no one would even have thought Apple a suspect had the weeping dryad not confessed immediately, the only thing that spared her from the lumberjack’s axe was Hawthorn’s far swifter punishment. The dryad wasting away before the horrified eyes of the unprepared paladins who had merely been hoping she might have noticed something, the entire orchard wasting with her.

The Forest Guard, for the first time ever, left their forest, marching out to wipe the small village of Rediksburg from the map. It was not entirely without casualty, Rediksburg was a Council town and the mage stationed there had been a pyromancer, the natural enemy of all trees and he’d slain dozens before he’d been overwhelmed and a misshapen brute had driven the stake at the end of their arm through his eye.

No bodies were ever found and the Forest Guard’s numbers swelled.

A cutting of Pine was taken, a single guardian ferrying them deep into paladin lands and the cutting was painstakingly planted out of sight near a field of [insert winter crop]. Within the three days it took to find and kill her she was the only living plant for miles.

As this was all happening two dryads were being escorted, one to the High Paladin’s Citadel at New Pax and another to the Council of Mages. Bonsai had always been regarded as a dark art by dryadkind, but there were few dark arts that Von Mori had not employed at some point in her long history. Everyone had to have diplomats afterall and dryads were notoriously immobile, sacrifices had therefore been made.

In the month since the elder dryads had pledged themselves to war they’d been travelling, each guarded by a senior Forest Guard, a paladin slain by Von Mori herself, because no lesser hand could have done the deed.

Travel had been slow. Teleportation was a mage’s art and Von Mori had no mages. Nor wagons or horses, though where possible they made use of them though for all the forest lacked coinage as well it did not lack wealth, the roots of the great trees had split rock aplenty and they knew well how mortals coveted shiny things. A ruby the size of a fist could get even something as hideous and strange as a Forest Guard carrying a plant pot a very long way indeed.

To both seats of power of the great factions of Contenmere a message was delivered, war, war unending, until the head of Allister Lutan, son of Anton Lutan and Lord Protector of the South West, was delivered to the heart of Von Mori.

For High Paladin Gregor Voltoya it was a headache he dearly did not need, his only consolation was that, for all the problems this was going to cause him, the Council of Mages would be suffering an even greater pain. Being asked to hand over one of your own was one thing, being pressured to try and force your greatest enemy and ally to do so was another entirely.

If Lutan had told him his plan had included the murder of a greater dryad he would never have agreed to it. Already the loss of Erebus was being felt greatly, just having the threat of the rogue necromancer (and close friend) out there had prevented all sorts of monsters, some human, some not, from coming out of the woodwork for fear of a black robed figure darkening their doorway, but it was a loss he had prepared for and mitigated. A war on top of all that was threatening to topple some already precariously balanced spinning plates.

Alas he could not simply discard Lutan, his zealotry was sadly popular and his conduct thus far competent enough to turn heads, his bravery beyond question, the renowned mage-hunter had thrown himself without hesitation into odds so long he had no right to emerge alive. What he had usually emerged as was covered in blood, and, a rarity in that grisly work, with survivors of whatever ghastly ritual he’d interrupted in tow.

With little choice he scheduled a meeting of the Lord Protectors, to be conducted by secure message stone, for the next day. He knew what result the vote would return but at least he could say he had tried. At least he could comfort himself in the knowledge that no one was having a worse day than this.

 

*

 

This, the bard concluded, after a moment’s thought, had to be the worst day of their life. Sure there had been tragedies, friends lost, confidences betrayed, but for sheer unadulterated stress today was the clear frontrunner.

Forest Von Mori’s opening offensive could have been a lot, lot worse and if they hadn’t been paying attention it would have been. For starters the diplomats nearly hadn’t made it, twice they’d had to distract a guard with a hot temper from heading in the direction of the Forest Guard on the paladin side of the border. Once, on the mage side, they had had to go so far as foul a mage’s aim where they’d seen what was a monster by any measure and acted on reflex, a blast of lightning earthing itself harmlessly on a metal guardrail.

Now that had been taxing, bardic magic was always at its weakest when it was overt and there really was no other way to interpret a bolt of lightning bending away from its target at nearly ninety degrees, the steel post that acted as the thinnest of pretenses for the spell to work  was slagged in the process – which had at least wiped their own magical signature from it.

The bard did not want to think about the reaction if the two dryads had been slain. Not from Von Mori, it was hard to escalate from all out war, but there were other forests and they would not take kindly to it, for all Von Mori had few true allies, if any, killing their diplomats, no matter how grotesque their bodyguard, was a bad look.

The debacle at the Arisvale Orchard had also been one they’d had to contain, hundreds had died certainly but it could have been so much worse, once the reports had come flooding in they had almost fled for the lab and in the course of the next few hours caused no less than fifteen horses to throw a shoe, ten wagons to get stuck in deep mud and one unfortunate wagon driver to get pressganged where he’d stopped for a drink before his apples could get to market. Anything they could think of to keep the fell fruit away from people.

There had been other methods, desperate ones, that they had resorted to when all else had failed, when there had been no rain, when the farrier had been too skilled and the driver too wise. It had not taken much of a push to persuade the driver they had earned a light snack. That was one memory that when they put it down they were not sure they would have the courage to pick back up again.

Hopefully the Holy Paladin Order would never know just how lucky it had been.