A rusty thundercloud rolled over the salt flats, directed onward by a score of warhorses. Iron-shod hooves tore through the crusty earth and scattered clods of salt through the air. Sweat-soaked horses of pure muscle charged at full gallop before the roiling pink cloud; riders upon their backs held bronze-tipped spears aloft, each decorated with silk banners that glowed in the sunlight.

Several hundred yards before them, a gaggle of figures rendered featureless silhouettes by the glow of the white salt plain stood defiantly before the thundering cavalry. Though they outnumbered the horsemen some three to one, their death was assured. Nothing - certainly not some undisciplined smattering of barbarians - could hope to halt this wall of muscle and bronze.

A young boy with handsome locks of curly black hair led the horsemen on. He gathered the cape of purple silk fluttering violently on his back as he turned in the saddle to rally his companions. The horsemen dug their heels into the haunches of their steeds and they sprinted across the empty white expanse. Gleaming yellow spearpoints lowered down to the ground, each lance bobbing with the stride of the horse beneath it.

The pathetic wicker shieldwall of the tribesmen buckled as their courage vanished in the face of the rumbling death approaching them. Their line collapsed as the cowards among their numbers broke rank and fled to the spindly mountains for dear life. With their victory assured, their leader in the purple cape thrust his spear arm up to the sky - rallying his fellow riders onward once more. He let loose a throaty warcry as his steed closed the gap between the routing desert fighters.

But his cry was cut short. A crude arrow loosed from somewhere on the plain sailed from the sky plunged deep down between his clavicle - just above the lip of his gilded cuirass. A wad of fresh pink blood burst from his mouth as his eyes rolled back into his head.

_________________________

With a violent scream, Queen Lyca woke herself. Drenched in sweat, she bolted upright off the cushions of the lounge and found herself upon the deck of the galley [i]Didela[/i]. Uncertain as to where she had woken, she took pause for several moments spent determining where she was and whether what she had just witnessed really happened, or if it was merely a nightmare. One by one, the events of the past week came to mind. Syros and Galos both were no more - and she was not dreaming. She gagged as the awful realization came to her once again. On weak legs, she stumbled off of the chair and staggered to the side railing of the galley and leaned over the edge to vomit. Her empty stomach wrung itself, but ultimately failed to produce anything. Lyca could not recall the last time she had anything to eat. For man eats to live after all, and Lyca no longer had the desire to do either.

A whole moon - the Pearl of Dys - glowed a spectral white as it hung low over the midnight sea. Legend had it that on these nights, Dys herself lured the forlorn and hopeless toward the moon off of cliffs, mountaintops, ramparts, and windows like flies to a candlelight. Queen Lyca needed little persuasion from the Sister of Death; she saw no reason to continue on. Her beloved husband and unbowed king, and her cherished son through whom her blood would rule the world for joyous centuries, had both been stolen from her. Across this sea, on a cold desert of uninhabitable saltland, avaricious generals who pretended undying loyalty to her husband sharpened their swords and prepared to tear asunder all that her Syros had spent his entire life building. The coming months and years promised a cataclysm the likes of which had never been seen in the Mortal Era. A future of destruction, hardship, and sorrow is all that awaited; a future that Lyca had no interest in seeing.

She could end her part in the living nightmare that had become of this world. She could fall beyond the railing into these dark waters, beneath the moonlit waves and down to the very bottom - deeper than the siren lairs and haunts of drowned titans - through to the waters beneath the world where she would fall into the Great Void. There, in the blackness, her drowned body would tumble for a thousand years until one day, she might come across the spirits of her husband and son. At last, they could be rejoined, together in the blackness, far beyond the world its atrocities.

Queen Lyca threw one leg over the side and straddled the rail as one did a saddle. She twisted about, with one foot planted on the deck and the other dangling over the foam churning along the hull of the ship.

"Milady!!"

Septilios' voice rang out from somewhere behind her. The Queen was startled, and in her hesitation gave Septilios time enough to reach her. A rapid clopping of his peg leg against the deck of the ship signified that he had seen her over the rails. Before she could think to shove herself off and escape him, rough and calloused hands scooped up around her waist and yanked her over the rails onto the deck.

"By the Creator, what happened?!" Septilios demanded as he deposited the Queen back onto the cushions of the chaise lounge. "I heard a terrible scream. Tell me, what happened?"

"I-I had a horrible nightmare, Septilios." Lyca confessed. "So enrapt in the nightmare I was, that I must have screamed and walked about the ship, and did any number of other things. I don't recall anything until I heard you cry out."

"Thank the Sisters I saw you when I did."

"Indeed. I am indebted to you, dear Septilios." She said with feigned gratitude.

"Think not of it." Said Septilios dismissively. He took the Queen by the arm and pulled her gently onto her feet. "I may not have been there to protect Syros or your son... but I shall not lose you, my Queen."

"Now come with me, I will find you a vacant bunk inside the cabin. It will hardly be fit for a Queen, but you shall rest comfortably upon it all the same without fear of falling overboard. We must be well rested, for we arrive in Copsis tomorrow." And so the Queen followed reluctantly behind her guard down to the galley's cabin, looking longingly over her shoulder at the Pearl of Dys as she went.