[h3]West of Olira[/h3]

It was a misty day on the westernmost Askorian seas, but the Liba cut through this mist like a sharp knife through cheese, for Freishannese mages conjured winds into the sails of the ship, allowing not only the ship to press on, but giving the crew limited visibility in the dense fog.They had begun passing the islands marked by the maps of the Seobaghs, and while the crew of the ship grew relieved to return to familiar waters, Bahar had grown anxious about his return to Olira.

The living corpse, Sir Robert, had been held in the moist enclosure of the below deck, and while he had been properly attended to by the crew of the ship, the captain has yet to speak to him. Today, however, Robert was informed that the Olirian would see him.

Robert had been mostly quiet during the journey, save for adamant doomsaying whenever approached about heading west or the meaning of his amulet. He often spent his time leaned against the wall, legs splayed out, unmoving and his eyes staring at the pulsing gemstone. He didn't eat, drink or sleep, he only sat.

In the wreckage of the ship, the crew found his Lynnfairish longsword hidden in the pile of strange gritty dust, and with hesitation returned the weapon to him. He kept the blade across his lap, the edges dull from overuse, and the tip rounded with time. He paid little attention to it after the initial reunion and continued to obsess over his pulsating prize.

A stream of light beamed down onto the corpse's forhead, and the ragged privateer descended into the bowels of the ship. Bahar approached the knight, slowly but confidently, and crouched down to greet the cadavre eye to eye. "How goes it, Robert?" he began.

"Every moment closer to Askor, the better," Robert answered, his voice gritty like dried dirt but saturated with a well settled Lynnfairish accent.

Bahar grunted in response, rubbing his nose and waiting a moment, articulating his reponse. "So, I think you owe me some answers, sir." There was a tinge of sarcasm in the last word, but little mockery. The privateer was still unsure of the true nature of this...creature, but rudeness would yield him no answers.

"I suppose I do," Robert nodded his head, unseen bones in his neck creaking, "but my story starts out with asking of you one last favor."

"And what you that be?" The captain asked, a bit impatiently but still with sincerity.

"Upon return to Askor, you see me to my final destination," Robert looked down at his broken hip, "as you can see, I am in no condition to do the walking myself. If everything is correct, you won't need to go far from wherever we land."

"We head to Olira." Bahar's voice was stern. "I am unsure of where your...final destination...may be, but I am telling you that as of now, we head to Rilik. What occurs after that is yet to be seen."

"It should be close, then, wherever that may be," Robert seemed to agree to the schedule, "but now I suppose I do owe you an explaination."

"I suppose you do," the privateer responded, awaiting Robert to continue.

"I am a knight of the Silver Legion," Robert paused, "do you know of us?"

The captain chuckled. "All of Askor knows of the Silver Legion." He paused, his voice growing more questioning in its tone. "But I also know that the Silver Legion was killed [i]to a man[/i], centuries ago."

"So you all might think," Robert answered, "those who returned to Askor with Celia may have been killed, as well as those who fell in the far East, but I can assure you not all are dead, or well, completely dead. Those remaining under Grand Master Verran have a similar complexion as myself." Bahar knit his eyebrows, perplexed, but said nothing, waiting for Robert to continue.

"I suppose I should start at a better place," Robert tapped his chin, "three hundred years ago, The Prophetess Celia rounded up a legion of soldiers and fighters. Her powers had been well known before this but on instinct she suddenly felt the need for a fighting force, and so we all volunteered ourselves to her, the first being Bloodlord Verran of Lynn-Naraksh. Since that moment those two were always close, it is rumored that Verran knows secrets not even the rest of us know, but that isn't important right now."

Robert shifted in his spot, "we headed East, prepared to face what Celia described as the most dangerous being to all existance as we have ever known it. She seemed unsure herself about the true nature of whatever it was we were expecting, but we were all sure she was right. The further East we went, the more we all began to feel it. It is hard to describe, but I imagine it is the same feeling an ant gets when the foot about to stomp it shades the sun above it.

Our march continued in this fashion until one night. Celia came roaring from her tent, Verran was panicking trying to calm her, but we all heard her. It was the first time any of us saw her uncomposed or that expressive. She screamed about what she had seen in her sleep, what had looked back at her peering eyes. If it wasn't her who had seen what she saw, I'm certain whoever in her place would have died, their bodies not able to take the truth."

Robert held the amulet close, "she saw the Lord Emperor, but worse still, the Lord Emperor saw her. She described his many eyes peering down at her, and suddenly we all knew the name of the enemy we were marching towards."

Robert paused, staring at the captain, "we found him. At first we couldn't see him, our minds refused to believe his existance and so censored reality for us, but slowly he came into focus. When the entire horizon shifted, we realized that there wasn't a sky, just his form. Looking past him was difficult to begin with, but when we did our eyes met a paradox I can't rightfully describe. Many of our soldiers committed suicide on the spot, others simply died, but if I had to put it to words, there was no existance past the Lord Emperor, he had taken it for himself."

Robert bit his rotting lip, "it is hard to describe what happened next, but let me try."

He sighed, "we gave fight to it, I don't know why, but we did. It made enemy soldiers grow from the ground in groves, some forming in thin air, all a bizarre crystal. We stood no chance, strange polyhedrons stole our very existance as we fought, and when the Lord Emperor himself struck, well."

Robert blinked, his eyes wide in thought, "I don't even remember what happened. It wasn't anything my mind can process. The only reason the surviving members of the legion didn't die was due to Celia. Somehow she called upon some divine powers, wounding the Lord Emperor, freezing him in time. Me, Verran and half the Legion remained, fending off the crystal enemy while she escaped with the other half. She didn't want to leave, but Verran spoke some words to her, and she seemed convinced that she had to go back to Askor. So she left us there, under Verran."

"With the Lord Emperor stuck in time," Robert continued, "it was a matter of fending off the crystal horde, and quite frankly we suffered some terrible casualties, enough so that we had to retreat. But we kept at it, every day we would return, their perimeter having grown, and we would give fight to stem them as much as we could, perhaps in vain. It continued like this until one particular day."

"Verran was sad, I think, he was acting different," Robert looked off into the distance, despite being in a small cabin, "and slowly we felt something changing. Verran called upon me, Krag of Tarkima, Nestor of Osetina, Otis of Vlaanburg, and several others. While our bulk hit the crystal bastards hard, Verran and the rest of us snuck through the battlelines, and carved a way to the Lord Emperor. When we got there I felt that divine power the same as the day Celia struck the Lord Emperor, except tinged with dread. Verran was pulling something from the Emperor and as it reached us, all went black. When we came to we were already fighting the crystals, but we were different. We were no longer human, no longer just mere mortals, we were [i]Einherjar[/i], that's what the locals called us. In my viens I felt fire, and in my heart I knew a great divine power now dwelled within me. With new magics, we began to contain the crystals, and in a few weeks, their growing perimeter was halted by us. There we stayed since, studying our new powers, studying the events, the crystals, everything, defending the world by stemming the inevitable tide. We had no idea how long the Lord Emperor would remain in that strange stasis, so we stayed, ever learning and ever vigilant."

"Of course," Robert thought, "I always suspected Verran knew something more, which brings me to why I'm here. Our bodies slowly rotted with time, only our magic keeping us together and in time the stasis ended, and the Lord Emperor finihed his blow that he started long ago, but we were already away, having expected it the day prior. I cannot tell you what such an attack looked like but that country no longer exists. The crystals were given new brethren, and soon their army began to devour the people. We slowly realized how they were doing it, what was resistant to their all devouring blasts, and what was the best way to fight them, and in such Verran sent me to gather this."

He lifted the amulet with the pulsating gem, "before they did. But before I could get back to the main army, I ws cut off by the ever growing enemy forces and was forced to escape by going east, hoping to find the westward of Askor. With this necklace, Askor has a fighting chance where the other regions fell, and I think they knew that too. They followed me, but I killed every last one, but not before one damn crystal gave me one in the hip and a crack across the gem."

"So now you see, I have a delivery to attend to," Robert folded his hands over the gem, "any questions?"

Bahar sat pondering, thinking over the story just relayed to him. All those stories the Serenists had taught him as a child...they were true, or at least partially. "But the Lord Emperor...he was killed by Halwende, wasn't he?"

"Trust me, as a Lynndfairish Knight and former Serenist, I was just as confused as you are," Robert offered, "Verran was quick to tell me that 'clearly not."

"I'd have slapped him if Celia hadn't explained to me, or well, in a way," Robert nodded his head in a self acceptance, "Halwende never managed to kill the Lord Emperor, but he did wound him. Something about the whole thing being incomplete, and various babbles on the existance of magic and how everything works. She spoke a little too round about for me to truly understand it. It didn't help she never had the full story all at once, always waiting for the next dream, the next vision. How he got in the middle of nowhere though, 'fraid Verran is the one to ask, he as I said, seemed to know what was going on."

Robert held the amulet tightly, "but I do know this," he looked up at Bahar, "what actually happened thousands of years ago, what truly caused the disappearance of the primordials, the fall of Lynnde, the creation of mortal freedom, magic even -- all of that -- over back in Askor, we never had the slightest clue, never even touching the truth that much I know."

The captain chuckling cynically. "Hah. I always knew those preachers were a crock of nothing." He sat down across from the knight. 

"Doesn't really matter much now does it," Robert answered, "I have a task to do, we have a war to fight."

"Yeah, well..." Bahar looked to the floor. "It's not a war that's mine to fight, Sir Knight." He sighed, and rose to his feet, kicking up the dust of the cabin floor. He stood, turned away from Robert, the sounds of the creaking wooding on the ocean softly ringing in his ears.

"You're not wrong," Robert said, his voice grim, "you'd do best to stay away, and take everyone you can with you."

"Why's that?" The captain turned to face the corpse. "Utyre is strong. They can take what's thrown at them." He paused, crossing his arms. "And Olira is far away from the madness in the East. We'll be safe there."

"Utyre won't be taking anything, I'm afraid if the Crystals get to them before Verran they will be doing a lot more giving," Robert shook his head, "stay in Olira, but be prepared to leave."

The Olirian stood for a moment, digesting the information. "What of your ship? What caused it to sink?" He chuckled. "When we found you, you were stranded with a hole in your ship that seemed almost to be punched in."

"Wood doesn't really do the trick when up against those polyhedrons, their blasts just eat right through it. Took a bit out of the the side too, lopsided the entire ship. Lucky there was only one or you'd find me swimming, or maybe crawling along the ocean floor. Not going to lie, I laid in that boat for so long that I did consider it," Robert answered, "surprised they never sent more crystals after me to be honest. They probably didn't expect me to channel my magic into keeping the gem from dissolving instead of healing myself."

Bahar smirked, and looked to the floor before looking back up at Robert. "I will get you to Olira, Knight. But beyond that, I offer no guarantees."

"That's all I ask," Robert returned the smirk, "and trust me, you won't regret that."