The sky that was not a sky burned with hatred. The alien stars paled as great bolts of lightning ripped the firmament to a varicolored harlequin daylight. The plain surrounding the Black Ziggurat heaved with struggling men and monsters. To call it a battle implied an order that did not, could not, exist in this alien place. This plane existed beyond the veils which separated the mortal from the divine, a cursed and created place. Regiments tore at each other like animals, bright iron spear points clashing against bronze armor, chariots thundering across the red dust to slam into infantry, crushing them beneath iron shod wheels or wheeling away to shower brightly fletched arrows into the packed, screaming ranks. There were no lines, and no sides anymore. Men gathered where there seemed common cause and hacked and stabbed blindly at other such gathering, seeking to escape but with no clear idea how. Wizards and Sorcerer Captains lashed at their troops with whips of etheric power, driving them this way and that in hopeless attempts to create some kind of order. Nor were men alone on the field. Dark robed serpent folk hurled balls of sickly green fire into the black and gold tabarded guard of some mighty city state, stripping the flesh from the bones of the brightly caparisoned militiamen. They turned to run, only to be hacked down by a trio of hulking three eyed giants whose necks were all but crushed by sorcerous chains of commands. Innumerable goblins swarmed over a war cart, stabbing with fluted obsidian spears, or simply rending the crew with claw and teeth until blood dripped from the layered ox hide armor. A great beast the size of a small house, half lion and half bear, tore at the underside of a giant eagle that had been armored with knots of braided rope and bronze plate. It flashed its bladed wings as the pair tumbled and struggled, oblivious to the dozen warrior priests of Calect that were crushed to paste between them. A being of light so pure burned the eyes of those who looked directly on it, screamed like a dying mountain as a great serpent with eyes of emerald fires squeezed its verdigris coils around it like a strangler’s cable. The dead lay everywhere, burned, blasted, and bloody but even that ocean of blood could do nothing to moisten great dusty plain. Not even the sky offered piece, serpentine creatures with crimson feathers coiled and struck at scaled wyverns, opening great wounds which rained acid blood down onto the carnage below. Leather wings beat like distant thunder as malformed gargoyles weaved and dived, lifting men into the air and dropping them as living missiles.



Even this carnage seemed less terrible than the Black Ziggurat at the center of the plain. Its very size was blasphemous, an obsidian pile that rose almost a mile from the dusty plain. Each tier was thirty feet tall and was covered with bas-relief sculpture that twisted the minds of those who looked at it. In those carvings blasphemous things coiled and cavorted as esoteric sagas whose meanings could only be guessed out were played in sinister curves of obsidian. The dead lay piled against the bottom layer of the ziggurat, where they had fallen in desperate attempts to climb it or to prevent others from climbing it. No such order remained now, only the stink of blood and dust, and the eerie dread of terrible magics that corrupted the air.



The summit of the pyramid supported a vast stella of pure white stone which stretched up into the heavens, branching out into finer and finer tendrils which reached toward the alien stars like questing fimbriae. The surface of the stella had been carved with runes that glistened with a red wetness as though bleeding. Legend had it that Shihurnezar the Illuminated had carved the runes with the severed fingers of Ark-Andu, the Dead God of Creation, and that his blood still oozed over the primordial rock.

Calliope suspected that it was the stella itself that was bleeding, rent by that ancient heretic to allow magic to seep into the mundane muck of reality. Besides, everyone else was bleeding today, why not the universe? Calliope stood upon a stone seal, one of seven arranged in an irregular heptagon. Her seal was carved with runes and abstract representations of the sky and the heavens. The six remaining seals each boasted an occupant. They had many names, that fell company: The Seven Shards of Midnight, The Seven Curses, The Seven Servants of Night. Universally though these seven sorcerers were feared simply as ‘The Seven’. They had been raised up by the greatest and blackest wizard of the age, Iskandrin of the Twisted Soul, and had been the instruments of his decade long quest to raise himself to godhood.



The quest had laid waste to cities and kingdoms, as he had ransacked temples and archives for their ancient and jealously guarded secrets. Hundreds of thousands had perished in wars and famines, and at the hands of the creatures of nightmare that had slipped through the cracks in reality opened by Iskandrin’s black rituals and unearthly communions. The Seven were his lieutenants, indispensable to his plans but also potent threats to their master. They were bound to him with potent geases which compelled their obedience, if not their love, a fact which prevented them from scheming against him and each other not at all. Calliope suspected that Iskandrin liked it that way, the petty intrigues of his servants amused him. After tonight, when he ascended to godhead, he could afford to be amused but not quite yet. Calliope stood naked, every inch of her pale skin painted with sigils and wardings, her arms spread as a torrent of arcane energy poured through her body, raven black hair falling to her back like an ebon waterfall. She chanted constantly, the liquid sigils of Aklo spilling from her lips, the language of Creation burning in the air in pale blue flame. The other seven were doing the same, building a mystical ladder for Iskandrin to ascend to his blasphemous ambition. At the same time the fingers of her left hand, concealed from the others, moved in tiny but precise gestures. This was petty magic, among the first she had learned at the Temple after she had been tithed to Anu-Ishara. None of the haughty priestesses could have imagined using it for what Calliope intended but then, none of them were alive to imagine anything. Their world view had been narrow and petty, Iskandrin of the Twisted Soul had broadened Calliope’s horizons. With a tiny fraction of her power, so little as to escape notice, she reached down and began to bind herself to the seal. It was probable that most of the Seven were making their own attempts at escape of subversion. The misshapen albino Kimogen, whose naked form bulged with unnatural muscle and bristled with brush like hair, certainly did. He was too clever by half and far too ambitious to remain enthralled forever. The fiery haired Seylaya made no secret of her hatred for her master and could be relied upon to be scheming. All of the others probably were, save Leti, whose blind love of Iskandrin was matched only by her hatred and jealousy of his other disciples. Each of them in their hearts wondered if they might have left their scheming too late and that the moment of final dissolution was already upon them.



“Attend me my children!” Iskandrin boomed, his voice so loud, even over the clamor of storm and battle, that it pained Calliope’s ears. Nor was it mere words, the command thundered in her mind and her marrow, forcing her to obedience. Calliope redoubled her chanting, pouring arcane energy towards her master who began to rise towards the stone Stella on a glimmering pillar of golden energy. Each syllable of Aklo felt like regurgitating broken glass and Calliope trembled with the effort of continuing, her fingers twitching desperately, magical tendrils reaching down to brush against the seal. Iskandrin continued to rise towards his destiny, his hands stretching out eagerly to the face of the stella. He had only to touch it a few moments, to pour himself into the pillar of creation and to ascend to Godhood. Calliope felt herself connect to the seal and began to pull at it like the tumblers of a lock, if she could unbind it before…



There was a tremendous crash as something immense smashed down onto the top of the ziggurat with a sound like ten thousand armories collapsing. Great metallic wings swept up a hurricane of dust and Calliope’s eyes widened in terror as she saw the hundred foot long clockwyrm skid across the stone, it’s star iron claws gouging foot deep furrows into the rock. It cast a bow wave of dust and great showers of sparks where metal tore at stone. It had been a magnificent beast, overlapping plates of brass and silver inlaid with a king’s ransom in gemstones. Lightning strikes had fused huge patches of it together and molten metal hung in glimmering icicles. In places the scales had been blown away to reveal the cogs and mechanisms beneath, skittering electric and etheric corposant. The great nets of electrum wire which made up its wings were torn to glittering shreds and the blue white balefires of its eyes flickered even as it belched thin streams of flame in irregular gouts. The beasts mighty jaws snapped spasmodically as lightning crackled over its burned and fused body, great teeth shattering a statue of a woman with a spiders body into gravel before it finally stilled. Only a mad man would try to fly the thing through the storm, much less over a battle in which every wizard and half of the archers in the world were locked in a blind death struggle. But a madman had. Eaon Cormac, King of Tothweven, High King Eaon as he now styled himself, leapt from the gem encrusted howdah on the back of the dying clockwyrm, if such things could be said to die. He was a handsome, if severe, looking man, muscular and wolfish. The king wore a gold circlet at his brow, but was naked to the waist, his body covered in spiraling glyphs of blue woad. He literally smoked, tendrils wreathing around him like vines, his famous red braids burned away by the lightning that had laid low his steed. The great spear, Annakon, was in his hand, its golden shaft wrapped with ivy and caphron flowers, it’s star metal point gleaming in the lightning light dark. His warband came with him, each man a hero in his own right. Black Tam, Lothar of Bel Mara, Naden of the Grove and half dozen others of whom the bards sang.



“Cease this blasphemy before the Gods destroy us all!” Eaon boomed, his voice clear and commanding. Clearly the ultimatum was rhetorical because Lothar, a great blond bear of a man, struck at Seleya with his terrible hooked axe. The weapon seemed to stick in empty air an inch from the woman’s nose, then shattered with a subsonic boom that pitched Lothar twenty feet to crash into the body of the clock wyrm, a jagged strut erupting from his chest in a shower of blood. Lothar looked down in surprise, then went slack as his lifeblood poured from the terrible wound.



“You have come too late fool,” Iskandrin sneered, his voice dripping with venomous contempt, “and the only God that shall destroy you is me.” Iskandrin took another step on the glowing pillar and stretched forth his hand. It pressed against an invisible barrier between him and the stella, a pale gold wall seemed to shiver and writhe around his hand, as though disgusted by his touch. It resisted, pushing back against the unnatural thing this mortal wizard was attempting. Iskandrin shouted some black command and Calliope felt the energy of entropic death that lay like a spring flood on the plain below, surge up the sides of the ziggurat. Screaming shadowy figures boiled up and onto the pinnacle, spectral weapons or clawed hands extending. Calliope felt their hatred and malice for the architects of their destruction as they surged past, parting like a river around the rock of her defenses. Aklo poured from her mouth in a shriek that would have been unintelligible if the terrible language of creation could ever be anything other than horribly precise. Her hand spasmed wildly as her secondary spell managed to hook something in the seal, unbinding and unpicking it. The company of heroes leaped to the High Kings’ defense, many of them bore magical weapons which destroyed the shades utterly or sent them alight with dark purple flame that burned them away. Danan-sha, the High Druidess, hurled farie fire at the host, cutting them down by the dozens. But it was not enough. Calliope watched as Pallas Felmartin, easily recognizable by his silver hand, was ripped to pieces by specters which set at once to feasting on the steaming gobbets of flesh in a vain effort to slake the eternal cold. Danan-sha was pulled down a moment later by the horde of hungry spirits, her screams lingering far longer than should have been possible. With a tremendous cry which shook the ziggurat, Iskandrin pushed his hand through the golden barrier, which suddenly solidified then shattered like glass. His fingers fell forward and smeared themselves in the blood leaking from the stella. The world seemed to slow as the mortal and the immortal, separated at the moment of creation, came into contact. The magical forces shook the very sky as Iskandrin began to try to remake creation to his will.

“Now my children, I have one final sacrifice to ask of you,” Iskandrin’s voice sounded in Calliope’s head, it was strained as though the great wizard were trying to hold up an incredible weight by main strength. She felt his fingers sink into her soul and begin to rip it away, drawing her strength to him. Iskandrin had no need of servitors now his dark design was complete, and no desire to share power, the last service of his Seven would be to be absorbed into the black well of their master’s soul. The screams of the other Seven were like bells over the tumult as each of them was drawn towards their master. Calliope made a desperate grab for her mystical hold on the seal and the ancient magic opened like a loosed knot. The Powers of the Sky poured up the link into Calliope. She felt like a woman trying to swallow a river and the arcane sigils painted on her body began to smoke and burn away even as she rose into the air on a pillar of congealing starlight. Triumph surged in her as strength swelled within her pouring from her body till she glowed with starlight. With this power she could cast Iskandrin down, she could be the one to claim the secrets of the stella and ascend to god hood. She opened her mouth to laugh but it transformed to a scream as a tremendous physic weight clamped down around her.

“Calliope… you always were the cleverest of them,” Iskandrin’s voice chuckled in her head, “a child’s cantrip to open one of the Wells of Eternity, who else would even have conceived of it? Of course, it would have driven you mad long before you could have mastered it but no matter. I wish you could see it Calliope, see the world through my eyes, the eyes of a God!” She struck out at him with her newfound strength, the Aklo still perversely spilling from her lips to empower him. The mystical strike would have obliterated an ordinary mortal where he stood, but Iskandrin only laughed, drawing her soul towards his waiting jaws.

“Goodbye Cal…” Iskandrin cut off abruptly as a flash of gold leaped from the swarm of spirits in a rising arc. It struck the wizard in the back and punched him forward against the stella, pinning him to the stone. Eaon had used the half heartbeat of distraction to cast the mystical spear Annakon at his adversary. It was an incredible throw, one that beggared belief even among so many impossible things, but it struck true. Iskandrin was proof against almost all weapons, his body and mind layered with defensive magics, but Annakon was older and more potent than any weapon known. Legend had it, that it had been plucked from the depths of the blue ocean by the hero Mesha-ku who, with the aid of the Goddess Tara, hunted for the pearl of eternal life. Calliope didn’t know if that was true but she did know that in Aklo, Annakon was the only world that had a single meaning: Annihilation. The blade pierced the wizard and the stella with equal ease, opening a gushing wound in the stone and pinioning Iskandrin like a butterfly to a collectors board.

“No!” Iskandrin screamed, his hands scrabbling at the stella. Calliope could hear the victorious howl of the High King even as he was dragged to perdition by the surging horde of spirits. The whole ziggurat began to shake as though gripped by the most violent of earthquakes. Iskandrin was beginning to lose control of the spells that had created this place and it was being shaken apart by the contradictions of its own existence. Great fissures tore open in the plain below, swallowing whole regiments at a time. Cracks began to run through the ziggurat and, with a deafen roar, the northern stairway began to collapsed down the side of the structure in an avalanche of jagged obsidian. The air crackle and rip, sucking both the living and the spectral dead into some unknowable place.

“I…will…not…be…denied!” Iskandarin raged. Even now his strength was incredible. Calliope wasn’t sure if it was his alone, or the merging of his blood with the stella that impowered him but his grip on her grew ever tighter. She scrambled at the geas in her head but they were like hooks of star iron and would not be moved.

“You shall be the instrument of my return Calliope, even if it should take an age!” The mental command rammed itself deep into her mind like spikes of agony, the stubborn geas burning like fire. She felt it in her legs first, a slithering creeping cold sliding up her body. Her nude legs were encased in black veined marble which was spreading up her body at the speed of a pitcher of spilled wine. She screamed and tried to tear herself free but it was no use. With a roar like the end of the world the ziggurat shook itself to pieces as the sacred reality continued to rip itself to pieces. It was doubtful anyone on either side was alive on the plane below, but the lights of monsters and spirits were snuffed out by the avalanche of stone, or tumbled into the unimaginable abysses which opened beneath their feet. The destruction of the ziggurat left only the stella stretching to eternity in both directions, liberated from both land and sky. The marble flowed up over Calliope’s neck and chin and the last thing she saw before it closed over her eyes was her master and tormentor, pinned to the record of all creation by a golden spear.

@POOHEAD189

The world had changed. The river valleys of the old world had been washed away in a raging torrent of flood waters, and the once fertile kingdoms became the Sunken Realms. History became Legend, Legend became Myth, and as the Dragon Lords came and burned the old forests, and the Outsiders invaded in their ships of silver, when the Lizards-That-Walk devoured the southern tribes whole, still remnants of the land before lingered. Always did men pick up the pieces and rebuild, for it is in their nature to cling onto life as if it were a mother's skirts. The knowledge of civilization crept back into the world, and the Age of Calamity was replaced by an Age of Bronze and Silver, of Iron and Myrrh, and all that was once lost seemed to be found. However, life is not all men cling to, and some things that are better left forgotten, are uncovered and unbound once again...

The jungle was stifling, relentless. The branches of the trees reached over their boats, vines draped into the water like hangmen's nooses in the wet, sultry air. All was quiet, save the screeches of the jungle and the palpable uneasiness of the accompanied men. Rolgo Sunder twitched from the fat mosquito bite, cursing under his fetid breath. The squat coxswain's eyes shifted constantly, at times so focused on his suspicions that he forgot to squash the insects that preyed on his blood. He glared daggers into Beren's back, but the monk ignored him. He was too occupied with maneuvering the longboat, keeping his front foot stable on the bow. Behind him, the golden haired lady Nestepah watched the jungle and her men in equal measure, severe as an eagle.

The jungled island hugged the northern coast of the burned land, Theas. It was a part of a small, western archipelago that had not been mapped for centuries. Not since the lizards-who-walk had slaughtered most of the southern cities, save a few hermits seeking solitude or sea brigands that used them as lairs. People who ventured here disappeared, swallowed by some unknown evil, or perhaps a myriad of them. The seas had been exceptionally beautiful, but the sun was merciless, nearly burning through the mogshade of the canopy, which kept it just hot enough to form the suffocating steam. Strange furred beasts, small parodies of men Beren knew to be 'apes' screeched and cawed with undulated hoots.

"Captain, we are being watched! Look!" Iakovos's hoarse voice cutting through the pregnant silence. He was a bronzed man, similar to Beren in that way, but judging from his name, they were of different people. Iakovos hailed from the last isle of his ancient nation, Xykonos. All eyes followed his pointing hand to the treeline on the northern shore. Beren's eyesight was keen, but he could not make out any shapes in the impenetrable jungle, until his breath caught. The figure of an enchanting woman stood frozen, stricken, watching them from the shallows. It took him another look to realize it was naught but a bas relief, albeit of exquisite design despite the wearing. It was plastered onto a perfectly square block of basalt. Vines and ferns draped across the body of the block.

"We're getting close," Nestepah stated approvingly, but the icy woman rarely smiled. In fact, in the two weeks Beren had known her, he had only seen it once: When he acquiesced to go on this expedition. She glanced his way, and he nodded.

"Those eyes are made of jewels," Rolgo rumbled greedily.

"Agates, I think." Finley replied, the red haired fellow a keen lookout in the crows nest. It seems he had a fine eye for more things that ships. A few of the men looked at one another, but Nestupah gave them a 'sst!' that drew their attention.

"Eyes forward, lads! There will be plenty more where that came from once we find the Temple." She reminded them, and her assurances were enough to turn their talk into whispers and sly looks. For her part, she turned to Beren as if in confirmation. He gave her a broad shouldered shrug. "As far I know, but I've never been here before, you understand." He reminded her. "Besides, the Lugal will pay you and your men regardless, right?"

"Of course," she purred, noncommittally. The sly woman turned, her caraco jacket long since removed, her blouse gently stained with sweat. "But the more we bring back for his collection, the more he stuffs their pockets with the reward. Think of it as... commission." Weeks ago, they had come to his small island in the Neheoul Sea to seek his knowledge of ancient languages. Initially, when they had first beached on isle of the lonely minaret, they had been skeptical of his expertise due to his apparent youth, and bade him translate a rusted sword inscribed with Theonic runes. Despite his success at the task, he had gathered they had only accepted him because Nestupah and her men were desperate. He had to admit he was desperate too. His monastic order was dying, the great lugal kings of the remaining citadels too busy with their wars and their trade to preserve knowledge. If this expedition was successful, Nestepah and her Lieutenant, Ishkur, had assured him they would tell their king a Sanguken monk had been pivotal in their efforts.

"Captain, more busts!"

"I said, keep your eyes on the-" Her words died when Beren heard whistling, and he turned just in time to see a massive sailor from Ubta catch a dart in his huge neck, his eyes bulging. He swayed, and pitched over into the water with a wet slap. "Shields!" Nestepah raised her khopesh, and as one her men raised wicker shields and the occasional hoplon as arrows and darts sailed across the lazy river with the relentlessness of steady rain. Beren ducked under a javelin, spying a naked man in red warpaint staring at him from two dozen meters away. "Row!"

What men that did not carry shields worked the oars with fervent abandon, speeding their journey upriver as war cries and hoots followed them. Two arrows clunked into the boat inches from Beren's arm, nearly skewering his hand. He pulled it back as he watched crocodiles sliding into the water to devour whatever meat fell into the stew. A few of the Ubtar expedition shot arrows back with their composite bows, but there were too few to make a difference, and the foliage masked any damage they might have inflicted from their eyes. Their harassment lasted minutes, until they found themselves rowing under a vine laden archway made of unknown material Beren did not recognize. On it, a serpentine dragon snaked across the arch, clinging to it as if it were a nest. It's head arched away from it, towards the boats, its maw open and its irises like a cat's.

It took Beren a moment to realize the battle cries and the missiles had suddenly ceased.

The sign of the architecture, along with their apparent safety, was a boon to the morale of the men. They breathed easier, and even Nestepah seemed to relax, albeit only just. He knew he should feel the same, but despite himself, the monk felt a vague sense of impending doom.

It wasn't long until they began to see broken pillars and small, ruined structures half sunken in the murk of the river. Evidently long abandoned. Even the birds and insects had grown quieter here. Beren clutched the pendant at his chest, muttering a small prayer for safety and guidance. The river had grown slimmer, the longboats now a stride away from one another. Past the next copse of trees, the scattered, broken ruins gave way to a large, stout Temple. Entirely formed of black swampstone, despite its symmetrical design and geometric shapes that adorned the open doorway, it seemed a derelict, organic thing, as much a part of the land as any tree or mudbank. An exquisitely carved processional entryway poured from the oblong entryway and into the murk of the water.

Twin obelisks framed the entryway, made of mudbrick, shaped with algebraic twists that teased the senses. Upon each was carved an enchanting woman. On the left, she smiled sweetly, as if to welcome them to her home. On the right, her face was twisted, caught between a terrible transformation into a demon. Her mouth was open too wide, his teeth sharpe, her eyes bulbous, yet they knew it was the same woman.

"It's the woman from the relief," Beren remarked to himself. His voice had broken the silence. The large warrior Ishkur turned his way, and one of his warriors, an aga-ush, asked Beren who she was.

"I don't know..." He said, shaking his head. "A local deity. I can find out more once we get closer."

"Don't have to tell us twice," Nestepah remarked, ordering the five longboats to beach in the canal just to the right of the great structure. As their boats sank into the wet mud, they saw pilasters along the breadth of the walls, carved to reveal the event of a great battle. Sunbeams of light struck the figures, each pilaster a different deity, and over them, an great form cloaked in power just beyond an eclipse.

They stepped off the boats as steadily as they could, spears and axes of iron in their hands. Ishkur sent his men to form a perimeter as the others went to look for extra openings to the temple proper. Nestepah and a few select warriors stepped lightly to join Beren at the processional rampway, between the great obelisks. The door itself was old, heavy, made of cedar and bronze. The color had long since faded, but running his hand over the slabs showed him it had once been painting. Now, he had to decipher which grooves in the doorway were glyphs, and which were ornamentation. Ishkur placed his great shoulder into the door, pushing with all of his considerable might. He grunted, but it did not budge.

"It will take all day to break this open." The warrior told Nestepah, chewing on his bottom lip.

"Get your men to carve out a ram," Nestepah started, but Beren held up a hand.

"Wait!" He bade them, his eyes never leaving the doors, hands still caressing the etchings along its breadth. He recognized the glyphs to some degree, but they were queer, alien in some capacity. He could not guess. Perhaps it was a liturgical form of the old Xerubian script. He swore he could translate it to a rough degree, if he only had the...

"Aidkhul... Yek jaharat fi... alwahli... wadai alakharn yiasuni."

The sudden grinding caused the onlookers to flinch back, drawing their weapons defensively. Beren held his hands out disarmingly, though it was a gesture that was aimed at the doorway, as if it were a stray dog that would cease doing tricks if he spooked it. Inexorably, the doorway opened inward, and refreshing, cool air hit their faces. That was odd. Beren had expected the air to be musty, but there must have been ventilation elsewhere, cleverly implemented to keep whatever worshipers there were cooled from the elements. Beren breathed out, letting his shoulders ease, before a sudden pain exploded in the back of his head, and he knew no more.

---

He dreamed untold hours had passed. So long, in fact, that when Beren woke, the day had fled, and the night had been all but spent. There was a wan light from the doorway, he could have sworn, but when he truly woke up, he knew it was the same day, perhaps less than an hour later. The pain still felt fresh, albeit it had evolved into a dull ache. Someone had contemptuously tossed him off the entryway into the soft, fern covered earth beside the stone. No doubt they had assumed they had killed, or permanently damaged Beren. Unbenknownst to them, he was made of sterner stuff.

Groaning, he reached up to grip the edge of the stone rise, slowly pulling himself onto more solid ground. He heard no voices, and did not have it in his mind to check the boats. Instead, he gathered himself and rubbed his face, taking his staff in his hands and leaving his bag of scrolls within the drier lobby, by the entryway. As he stepped in, it was ensconced in gloom, but the light, the light of his dream, was still there. As if no matter how much shadow there was, you had enough light to spare your vision to some degree.

That was how he discovered the first eight corpses. They lay scattered in the lobby, skewered by arrows. It made no sense, he couldn't guess where they had come from. No native bodies were amongst the dead, and the arrows looked more sophisticated than the ones Beren had seen from the shoreline. One man lay with an obsidian arrowhead lodged into his eye, his other orb staring at the inner corridor that led further within. He looked, and the light poured out as if fire from the throat of a dragon. He squared his jaw and stretched his neck, before taking a tentative step onto the stairway that led deeper within the inner sanctum.

In the next room, he found more corpses. It looked akin to a small tomb, two stone dog-headed demon sentinels stood, four arms crossed, gripping scimitars in each clawed paw. Aside from that, and further bas reliefs of ancient conflicts of gods and men, there was no sign of danger. Yet Iakovos had lost his head, the man's torso draped onto a sarcophagus, his neck severed by some unseen blade. Seamas lay broken across the floor, his body twists, shattering clay pots from whatever had thrown him bodily. Four men had joined them in death, their wicker shields cloven and their bodies hewed bu mighty blows.

Every room was the same. There was a corridor with a walkway across water as black as ink, blood staining the stone. A library of ruined tomes, each corpse found mummified as if his blood had been forcefully drained from his body. The mausoleum, the shrine room, even the larder, everywhere he went, there were men who had been brutalized by mysterious guardians. He had begun to wonder if he was the last man alive, until finally he stepped into an immaculate antechamber, adorned with exquisite pottery featuring the likeness of the same goddess, great brass statuettes of sinuous drakes clutching crystalline orbs of swirling darkness, the walls adorned with tapestries of great heroes he swore he could recall, had he not been so enthralled and horrified of the past hour. The doorway past the room was encrusted with emeralds, rubies, lapis lazuli, and semi-precious stones that glinted tantalizingly.

He was ripped out of his contemplation when he heard cackling laughter from within the next room, echoing into the antechamber. Beren rushed through the archway, and found himself in a great hall of dazzling beauty, piles of golden coins from before the written histories had been penned rolled across the floor like distant hills. Xiphos and Khopeshes encrusted with jewels lined the walls, suits of armor glittered from unknown material, and at the furthest end of the warmly lit room, Nestepah, Ishkur, and Rolgo Sunder stood, gazing up at a scepter that lay clutched in the talons of a Bagrada, a poisonous serpent of massive proportions that rose above them like a vengeful god.

The woman, covered in blood and ashes from breeches to blouse, ascended the stairway as the two men watched. She stood tall, but to Beren she seemed positively puny before the massive figure of the serpent.

"Wait!" Beren cried, echoing his words from hours ago.

All three spun to regard him. Rolgo bared his teeth, having never hidden his hatred for Beren, jealous of the ladies apparent favor towards him. Ishkur sneered, hefting his massive axe, while Nestapah seemed more impressed he had been able to follow them so far.

"I knew I should have hit him harder." Ishkur remarked blithely.

"Well done!" Nestepah called over her shoulder. "It was out of respect for your lore-keeping that I kept Ishkur from cutting you down. Now stay out of my way, and you may yet get your endorsement."

"I said wait!" Beren roared, his voice reverberating powerfully. For the second time, Nestepah looked at him, and this time she was none too pleased. Beren did not care. He held his hands up, dropping his staff. "If you touch that scepter, we will all die! It has been written! I saw it!"

"Silence, whoreson!" Rolgo snarled.

"Why?" Nestepah asked.

"It is not for you." Beren told her, and as the words left his lips, it was the wrong thing to say. She gave a laugh, and he recognized it as the cackle from earlier. "It is for those with the will to take it! Ishkura, make his death quick."

"As you say, lady." The big warrior replied casually, grinning at the chance to fight once again. Apart from a large scar across his shoulder, he had managed to delve into the Temple depths unspoiled. Beren sighed, and waited another few moments before he reluctantly pulled off his monastic robe to reveal a surprisingly muscled torso, nearly bursting out of his white top. A few scars covered his arms. His dark blue salvar breeches seemed to absorb the light that glinted from the gold. Ishkur seemed surprised, evidently thinking he was merely a scholar.

The brute should have done his homework. The Sanguken had been demon slayers before the world had changed. He would be no easy prey.

Unfortunately, before the two men could clash in a feat of arms, Nestepah decided to reach for the scepter.

"Lady, I beg you!" Beren cried, reaching out as if that could make any difference.

"Silence!" She screamed, ripping it out of the clawed grasp of the Bagrada, greed in her green eyes. Ishkur was charging him now, but he did not notice. Instead, he backed away slowly, before sprinting out of the room. Even as he passed the archway, he saw the bronze statues begin to melt as if super-heated upon the surface of the sun. He gave an unceremonious 'shit shit shit!' as his long legs carried him, scooping up his staff as he ran. He heard Ishkur's cry of 'coward!,' yet before it had ceased to echo, it was followed by the accompanied screams within the vault. He heard a final, soul wrenching "NO!" from Nestepah, before all was drowned out by the sound of the world breaking.

Stone walls cracked, the stone floor sundered, every piece of bronze and brass began to melt, and to his horror, within the cracks he saw brilliant, fiery light. Magma. It seeped out of the walls, and the floor behind him in the corridor gave way, revealing the very heart of hel, lava crashing into the stone like waves in a squall. In the mausoleum, the stone guardians had fallen, broken upon the floor. He vaulted over one and continued his mad dash, hoping to all that was good he could make it. He leaped out of the last doorway before the great stairs, and lava poured out from behind him, nipping at his heels as he sprinted across the stone walkway, the black water having disappeared to reveal an endless chasm. Beren was brave. Almost fearless in fact, but that had limits. He felt some shame when he cried out in denial as the slim stone walkway broke beneath his feet, and he plunged into the endless nothingness of the abyss below.

---

This time, he truly did not know how long he had been out, and this time, he felt far worse than he had at the front of the temple. Yet he was alive, as painful as a comfort that was. He slowly opened his eyes, and miraculously, there was dim light, albeit from far, far above. He glanced up, but even that gentle light seemed blurred to his eyes. He must have received a minor imbalance of his humors within his skull.

"Blessed Oghru, why am I not dead?" He asked aloud, weakly. Better to have died in the fall that starve as he ceaselessly wandered whatever cavity he now inhabited, trying to find a way out. He reached up and held his forehead, glad to not feel anything more than a small knot when his fingers reached the back of his head. Groaning was now an old friend, and he slowly sat up, his world spinning gently. Blinking, he tried to see where he lay, likely in some massive, useless cavern. His surroundings did not disappoint, meeting his exact standards. It seemed almost like a wound in the stone, massive and bulbous, like one of the domed towers of Sagrahad. However, oddly enough, there was sign of ancient habitation. Broken amphorae and small, lesser coins lay ubiquitously on the expansive floor, and to his surprise, he found his staff a dozen meters away from his position, laying atop a mound next to a shattered urn.

"Of course..." He breathed, sarcastically. Beren would never have guessed he would have seen the woman again. Yet for the first time, he beheld a life-sized statue at the center of the light from above. It was formed of strange material. It was as black as the abyss, likely sculpted from black chlorite, he reasoned. Her body was lithe, shapely hip cocked, her bosom plump, and her limbs slender. Her body swathed in an ancient kalasiris. He was not a particularly lecherous man, he would have enjoyed seeing the head, yet it was missing. That, and her left arm. He got to his feet, somehow curiously possessed at viewing the thing. He stepped closer, and noticed both the head and the arm atop the central mound.

"Well, least I can do." He remarked, sardonic now that he really felt he had no chance of escaping. Yet he could not leave something of historical significance so broken, and so he took the head in his hands. Her hair was coiled in a ponytail, her eyes sharp and wickedly cruel, and her rosebud lips were pursed as if all before her was found wanting. Even with such a look, she was lovely, heart shaped face accentuated by her cheekbones. Whoever had sculpted this had been a marvelous talent, he thought. Gently, and with great care, he placed the head back onto the neck. To his surprise, there was no flaw after he had done so. Beren had thought some edge would have been missing, but it looked as if it had never been broken. The arm would be more tricky, he realized, and decided to at least see if it could still feet. He took the supple limb in his hands, and gingerly placed it upon the stump. "Huh, it fits." He said, and gently pried it away.

Until he realized he could not.

Beren blinked, but his thought process was broken again by yet another rumble of the surrounding area. He looked left and right and up. It seemed he was cursed from one catastrophe to another, and he backed away from the statue. At least, until he realized the rumbling came from the statue itself, and nowhere else.

He back away more fervently, and he began to run, until he realized there was nowhere left to run to. Little did he know what would happen next would change his life forever...

Iskandrin had prophesied the the power of the ancient seal, the dragon who became the heavens, would drive Calliope mad in time. He had been right, the spell that encased her body in stone had left her mind free to wrestle with what she had done, and what she had taken into herself. She had become unmoored, adrift with powers and ideas that no human mind was meant to comprehend. It had driven her quite insane but, as a wise man once said, eternity is a long time, esspecially towards the end. She did not know how long had passed, could not have known even if her shattered mind hadn't spent long decade recongealing, like dissolved salt emerging from a drying tidal pool. Sanity, of a sort, had returned to her only to be threatened again by the fact of her apparently eternal confinement. Without her hands or her tongue she could do no magics save those that originated in her own mind. With no spell books to teach her and no feedback to go on she had worked blindly, day by day trying to invent mental magics from scratch. It was an impossible task for a mortal, but she had the time. Slowly, ever so slowly, she had learned to reach out, to feel what was going on around her. Iskandrin had not hurled her blindly from the Plain of the Ziggurat, he intended her to wake one day and free him from what she now understood to be a hellish half life, torn between the mortal and the divine, bearing a wound that could never heal, and she couldn't do that if she awoke at the bottom of the ocean and immediately drowned or was crushed in the black depths. Slowly, ever so slowly she had felt herself in some warm place, years passed before she felt others around her and decades before she could so much as brush their minds. Even then it was the work of decades to influence them, to place in their minds the image of her, to draw them to worship her as they did their own feeble gods. Slowly, ever so slowly, she cracked open her own well of power to release a trickle that they had been able to shape, proof they thought, of her divinity.

Generations had passed. They were slow and stupid. But she was patient. She didn't have any other options afterall. They didn't know how to write, so she taught them, they didn't know how to forge tools, so she sent them dreams, they couldn't speak her words, so she had them carve them into the stone. All done as a blind woman might craft a chest of draws, with infinite frustration at how much easier it might have been if she had but a moment outside of her marble prison. At last she felt like the day had come, like they might finally work her liberation, felt it so strongly she could have sworn she felt her heart beat again, though she could no more swear than she could move. Then... nothing. It was as if a poor sexual partner had brought her close to release and then suddenly leaped from the marriage bed and vanished. The nothing endured, the eternal cold of her stony existence and the creeping thought that all she thought she had accomplished was just another trick her mind had played upon her...

The scream that had begun ages ago tore from her throat as she toppled to the ground in an undignified heap. She twitched violently, unable to bring to mind any of the once familiar rituals of operating a body. She came very close to dying simply because her heart forgot to beat, but a spike of adrenaline and fury at the thought were enough to make that desicated organ spasm violently, and the old poison began to pump through her veins. Her breath, foolishly expended in her scream, suddenly sucked in and she sat up, blinking one eye at a time in awkward rememberence. A man was standing before her. His garb was strange and his eyes were shocked. She extended her hand and spoke an arcane word of unmaking that should have blasted him out of existance. Nothing happened, though the man shivered slightly as though a cold breeze had blown down from a mountain. Calliope frowned and repeated the exercise, this time directing her ire at a nearby boulder. It compliently exploded into gravel. The man had freed her before her time she realized. She owed him for awakening her and by ancient covenants could not destroy him until she first repaid him. She extended her hands and drew darkness in around her until it swirled into a shift of midnight silk. The same magic lifted her to her feet, not so much for dramatic effect but because she wasn't sure she could operate all her muscles at once.

"Who," she demanded in the ancient Temple tounge. "Are you?"

Beren was about to think he had imagined the rumbling, and it began to quietly die down. His heart rate slowed, and he relaxed.

Until the statue screamed.

He screamed too, before bursting into action. He took his staff in both hands and flourished it, landing in a stance that gave him the greatest leverage with a forward swing if necessary. However, the statue was no longer made of black chlorite. It fell into life, falling to the floor and gasping for air. He stood transfixed, utterly confused on what exactly was happening. The monsters had been one thing, the lava another, but this was by far the least expected thing he had ever seen. Slowly, he dropped his staff, dumbfounded. He instantly regretted it when the woman reached up at him, and he felt a refreshing chill pass through him, his staff up again in the blink of an eye. Yet nothing happened.

He let out a breath, and was about to speak when she reached toward a boulder and it de-materialized in a cacophony of inky black sorcery. He yelped in alarm, and watched her rise up in a likeness of the goddess he believed her to be, and her supple form was ensconced in black silk that shimmered in the wan light. To his surprise, she spoke. Her voice was sonorous, yet the tongue was brutal and harsh. It was a strange contrast. It took him another few moments to realize he understood it. It was Xerubian!

He must have seemed completely stupid to the woman, flummoxed as he was. His mouth worked, but no words came out for three more heartbeats, until he swallowed and fixed his unkempt mane of hair. "I... am Beren... Beren Draiglwyf Mac'Riglas, a Sanguken monk. Er..." He tried to find the right words in his lexicon that he could translate. "T-Traveling seeker of knowledge."

It was as accurate as he could be. He was not about to lie to this deity or great spirit he had awoken. It was a humble description, to be certain. His strong form and scars, along with his relative youth, might have suggested otherwise, but there was no deceit in his voice. He looked around for an escape, but there was none. Hel, even if he spotted one, he would have had to run thirty meters over open ground to reach it. Instead, he pulled at his nonexistent shirt collar, before realizing he stood stripped to the waist.

"Who are you, great one?" He asked her tentatively, hoping his words were correct. A part of him believed he had called her a man, but luckily he had found the gender neutral term. He almost prostrated himself, until he remembered that was sacrilegious to his order.

It spoke, the Xerbian was stiff and heavily and hard to understand. He was a seeker of coconuts? No he must have been trying to say knowledge or maybe parsley? Also what was a Sanguken Monk, she had known a Sangu back in her own day, a charlatan prone to spouting platitudes and sleeping with his disciples wives, but the two things were probably unrelated. She needed to get things back into the canal this was, after all, a big moment for her.

Calliope drew herself up to her full majesty, somewhat unsteadily as she was still remembering how to use her legs after Tara only knew how long. She had rehearsed this moment endlessly in her mind, but in those mental fantasies she had been surrounded by her cultists as they woke her with proper ceremony and sacrifice. She stumbled over her prepared lines as several things occurred to her.

“Wait what?” she asked, eyeing the man, this ‘Beren’ apparently.



“How could you have woken me and not know my name? Isn’t that kind of the point of a temple?” she demanded, then deflated somewhat as she realized that he wasn’t following her words, or at least not completely. She felt tremendously thirsty, as though she hadn’t taken a drink in hundreds of years and the last place she had been before was some kind of apocalyptic battle beyond space and time that none the less managed to be damn dusty.

Fortunately, this Beren seemed not to be a complete idiot. He restated some of what she had said in halting Xerbian, leaving gaps at the parts he did not understand. She tried Taraic and Samodean, even the Temple Cant of Anu-Ishara, though in fairness he would have been put to death if he spoke a word of it. None of these languages seemed any better, though judging by the way his eyes bulged when she spoke the liquid semi-hiss, he was at least familiar with Taraic, or he didn’t like snakes.



“As a cultist you leave something to be desired,” Calliope grumbled, giving up on the theatrics and glancing around this place. They appeared to be in some kind of a cavern beneath the earth, though there were no obvious exits the fact that the space was scattered with pottery shards and coins suggested there must be a way out. Unless people had simply been casting offerings down from above of course.



“A.. cultist of who?” Beren replied. His pronunciation already improving as he gathered in her words and added to his knowledge.



“I was called Calliope of the Black Star,” she told him. Beren’s mouth dropped open as he stepped back and raised his staff, his eyes wide. He tried to say something, failed, then turned and fled, scrambling away over the uneven ground.

Well, Calliope thought that was more like it.

He tried to find a way out, hitting the wall that led up an inverted slope. The only exit was hundreds of meters into the air, and while he vainly tried to begin his climb, he only made to just above twice his height before he embarrassingly lost his hold. He fell and caught himself well enough, his training keeping him from falling into a heap, and it was only then he realized she was not pursuing him. That did not make sense to him. He had read what manuscripts remained of Calliope the Black Star, though scholars argued over her naming conventions. Many had called her Callypsa the Black Serpent, or Queen Kallos the Abyss. To most laymen, they would not have her in their cultural memory, save old curses or rituals by fires they did without thought of their origins. Beren hardly knew anything about her, because there was very little to know. All he knew was that she was either a powerful witch or a dark goddess, and that she preyed on mortal men's souls and devoured those that displeased her.

You know, the usual from legends of that era.

He poked his head over a broken piece of ground to see if she had done anything, but sure enough, she had remained where she was, arms crossed and raising an impatient eyebrow.

"I am used to my servants being frightened, but I have to ask if you are done." She said magnanimously, at least that's what he believed the gist of her statement was.

No gouts of black flame or rocks falling atop his head. Well, whatever Beren was, he wasn't a coward or a liar, at least not when it counted. He took a deep breathe, and steeling himself, he stepped around the stone and faced her. "I'm not a cultist." He admitted. "As I said, I'm just a humble scholar."

To his sincere surprise, she did not scream or turn into a giant serpent and devour him, or even looked offended. She gave a very human groan of annoyance, and muttered a word he had read once long ago that seemed to be a colloquial term for excrement. She placed two hands to her pretty face. He felt bad for interrupting her self pity, but he did add: "Uh, sorry. But uh, kill me if you're going to. I got nowhere else to go."

"I can't, you fool!" She suddenly cried, causing him to jump. Her majesty and dangerous nature was still there, but there was an air of petulance about her. He supposed most deities were just that, in the sagas. "I am bound to you! Saitar knows why I was awoken by you instead of someone I could work with, or would work for me, better yet."

Beren crossed his muscled arms, his handsome face incredulous. "Bound?" He echoed.



"Have you not read the Namtar Cycle? The prophecies and placement of the cosmos?"

"No..." He said slowly. "Well, yes, but out of the thirty six books, only some of book seven and twelve remain, at least we think those were their placements. Even then we know very little." He found he was growing slightly more comfortable, if only just. His thirst for lore was overcoming a bit of his incredulous fear at the absurdity of this meeting.

"Very well, I suppose I shall educate you." She declared with reluctance, and stepped down from the small height to stand before him. To Beren, she was a head shorter than him, though she stood as if she bore the weight and strength of a gigante.



"I have been awoken by you, yes? This means I am now bound to you for a period of thirteen years, or thirteen favors. Whichever runs out first, and I must remain...resolute in such... service..." It left her lips in a hiss. "The pact cannot be undone. The prophecies also say-" She drew in breath to speak, but paused for a long moment. Her poise was replaced with a sweet smile. "That it is an honor to serve."



Beren scratched the stubble on his chin, pondering. He believed he was catching on. "What happens if you don't give the favors, or stick to the time?"

She shrugged dramatically. "Oh you know how it is! A grim fate..." She lamented, slicing a hand across her throat. It was a simple gesture, one made less inconspicuous as her head leaped from her shoulders the moment the hand movement had been performed. It spun in a flip before landing in her waiting hands. A cry burst from Beren's mouth and he backpedaled, nearly falling over the stone he had hid behind. The headless sorceress continued as normal, only now her voice came from chest level as her amputated head continued to speak. "The powers that be will see to it I am cursed to a fate worse than death or imprisonment."

His heart thundering in his chest, he grabbed at his bare chest, eyes as wide as saucers. "You don't need a head!?"

"Well," she purred, lifting her disembodied head and placing it back atop her neck. Her eyes closed, she answered: "I can do so if I wish, but if someone else were to behead me, that would be a problem."

"Can you- no." He had started, but he immediately stopped the thought. Asking her if she could remove his head was not a question he wanted answered. He let himself calm down, before taking stock. "Okay so... the favors of a goddess." He reasoned, pursing his lips. Glancing upwards, he said. "Well, I can't ask a favor of you without us getting out of here. Bet you can't even do that, even if I asked." Beren gave a chuckle.

Calliope cackled, the cruel sound echoing across the walls of the dark chasm. "You think I am falling for that? You'll have to spend a favor for you to get out of here, boy!"

Beren sighed, kicking a rock. Her laughter still echoed as he spoke. "You're right. I was just hoping I didn't have to spend one to just see the old, red sun again."

Her laughter abruptly stopped. "Old red sun!? How long was I-..." She snapped her fingers, and the two of them were launched skywards, what looked to Beren like shadowy wraiths plummeting out of their feet, rocketing the two of them up and out of the chasm at a hundred meters per second. In three heartbeats, Beren landed on the procession walkway in a rough roll as Calliope looked up at the sky, squinting. Beren was just rolling over when she spun on him in a rage, eyes blazing. It seemed she had discovered the sun was quite yellow and healthy. His smug expression, chin resting on his hand, made it even worse.

"Oh very clever, boy! See if I remain charitable to you after that little stunt."

"You were going to be charitable?" He asked innocently, fluttering his lashes. He decided not to push it, however. He got to his feet and stretched his neck. She glared daggers at him, but there was a small bit of respect in her eyes now, if only the barest hint. "It's been twenty five hundred years, give or take a century, since you've walked the world. If we're going to be bound, we might as well not hate one another." He told her, and extended his hand. She curled her lips in distaste and confusion.

"Is this some sort of ritual?" She asked.

"It's a sign of agreement. You grab my hand, and we shake them for a brief moment." He explained.

It took her many long moments, but she acquiesced. "Very well..." Calliope remarked. Her grip was surprisingly strong. Once they let go, he decided to grant her a small bow.

"It is my honor to meet you."

"Yes, it is." She agreed. "Perhaps it will not be so unpleasant learning of this new world."

"You'll find you've effected it more than you think. We still have words that reference you." He told her, and then spoke without thinking. "-like Callypgian!" He tried not to curse, feeling like an idiot for even saying it.

"What does that mean?" She inquired, amused. His eyes went to her hips, then back to her own eyes. He fidgeted with his thumbs.

"It means beautiful."

At least his Xerbian was improving, though he still sounded like a barley farmer from Tel-Koltan. Calliope looked around her, she had no idea what part of the world she was in. Somewhere far to the south certainly, the jungle made that clear or did it? Could the world have changed so much since she had taken her unwilling break from it? She needed more information, perhaps the idiot had woken her up by his own arts maybe…

Calliope cried out and gripped her head. Waves of searing pain rolled through her and she fell to her knees. The idiot was beside her in a second, a look of concern on his face

"Are you a coconut?" he asked, though he probably meant 'ok', the words were similar. Calliope gritted her teeth and forced herself to her feet.

"Ten thousand years gives you quite a crick in the neck," she lied. The reality was that Iskandarin's geas was reminding her that it was still in place. She was compelled to work towards his liberation and her own schemes were not to be tolerated. The pain was a reminder from her ancient and undying master that she already had one mission and she shouldn't begin another.

"We should get moving," Beren suggested, skepticism clear in his voice.

"It isn't safe in this jungle after dark." Calliope snorted derisively.

"Where are we headed?" she asked.

"There is a city about a half day from here, I should inform the king there of the fate of our expedition."

"Does it have Temples? Libraries?" Calliope asked. Beren looked a little confused.

"Well yeah, it is a city," he replied. Calliope nodded, that sounded like a good place to start, not that she had any choice but to accompany Beren.

"We won't make it all the way by nightfall," Beren commented. Calliope looked out over the lush jungle.

"We could travel faster," she suggested, "if you wish." Beren gave her a long look before sighing and trudging off towards the east.

"What do you call the transport ships of this era?" Calliope asked, emphasizing every syllable so Beren might understand her. He tried to reply back with equal consideration as they strode through the thick brush. Beren had acquired a small, chopping sword from one of the dead men, and chopped away the clinging vines every few feet. It appeared even the skeleton crew that had been left to tend the boats had been slaughtered, though from what, it was difficult to say. Beren did not try and decipher the mystery, merely wishing to get out of there as soon as possible. The fact the most dangerous denizen of this accursed place was now two strides behind him, chatting with him, was a fact not lost on the young man.

"It... depends." He said, or at least he hoped he found the right word for his meaning. "We came on a Dromon, but there are various types of ships called a dhow, and a Baghlah is the largest of these."

"Explain this Dromon to me." She commanded, as if Calliope were speaking to a subject of a newly founded kingdom. Beren had to keep in mind this was likely exceedingly polite to her, though she had been uncharacteristically sweet in the cave. He needed to keep an eye out for that.

"It's a large ship with 3 flaps-" He did not know the Xerubian term for 'sail.' "Many strips, oars! Many oars to speed its way. A fist at its fore to hit other ships, with a full deck of many men. It is a long structure."

"What material is it made of?" She inquired. A strange question, but Beren answered politely.

"Wood?" He asked, glancing at her curiously. She merely accepted the answer, and he was glad he had guessed her question correctly, but it begged the question what else a seafaring vessel might be constructed out of. "With no crew left, I think we'll have to make do with a rowboat. There's another island half a day's travel here, like I said, and from there we can make it north to Ubtal in a matter of a week."

"Come now, why travel a week on the ocean in a dingy, fishing for food and at the mercy of storms. Why not simply ask a favor of me? I am a goddess, I am not going to sleep under the open sky on such a small vessel. You do know if you die, I am not-..." Her words trailed away, which he did not take as a good sign. Suddenly he felt a surge of danger, as if the air had changed, and he half expected a knife in his back, or something far more sorcerous. Instead, he heard a softer tone. "Actually Beren, I have a suggestion that would work out for the both of us."

The warrior monk turned, only to find Calliope far closer to him than her voice had suggested. Her right hand brushed his arm, her left reaching up to fix the length of his cloak around his neck. "I know of a place very close to here, unless I miss my guess." She remarked, her voice sonorous, even husky. "There is a gateway there, that leads us northward, likely far closer to this Ubtal."

Beren swallowed, keeping a stern countenance on the outside, but unable to help notice how lovely she was. Finally, he managed to find his tongue. "Why did you not mention this earlier?"

"I simply hadn't thought of it," she said innocently, fluttering her dark lashes. "Being petrified for thousands of years can do much to one's mind, but things are slowly returning to me."

He did not know if he believed her explanation, but he did believe in the gateway. Still, he could not help but feel this was some trick. He opened his mouth to speak, only for the ground to reverberate from the loud snarl of a massive, spotted jungle cat emerging from the ferns just three paces away. It had moved as silent as death. Beren was good with beasts, but they were in its territory, and he lifted his staff to keep both it and himself between the huge panther and Calliope, his sense of chivalry overriding his logic for the briefest moment.

"Let's back away," Beren suggested. He had yet to notice Calliope's irritated visage glaring at the cat for ruining the bait she had set. The feline swiped at the staff with paws the size of plates, batting it to the side before emitting another threatening growl. Beren was ready to wrestle this thing, but Calliope merely crossed her arms under her chest, breathed in, and snarled back.

The sound that erupted from her lips was thrice the strength of the jungle cat's growl, so powerful the ferns and foliage swayed and shuddered. The muscled beast's eyes went comically wide, and it leaped back in surprise and fear before scurrying away like a street cat, its great paws sending gobs of dirt flying in its haste to escape. Beren did not blame the cat, having jumped himself from fright, and only his fingers being locked had kept the staff in his grip.

"Now then, where were we?" Calliope asked, the sweet facade gone. She looked at Beren expectantly. "Shall we take my suggestion?"

"Yeah, sure, of course." He said breathlessly.

“Isn’t there an easier way to get to this portal?” Beren asked as he struggled up the rocky path towards the top of the jungle peak. Calliope had no such difficulty, she didn’t quite float but she clearly had no difficulty with the ascent.

“Certainly, if you ask me to I would be pleased to fly us to the top in a blink,” Calliope replied sweetly. Beren scowled but continued climbing. At least the view was worth it. The jungle spread away in all directions like a carpet of emeralds. Here and there steam rose and colorful birds cawed and flashed in the tree top. It took nearly an hour to approach the peak, the path growing narrower and narrower as the mountain tapered to its rocky pinnacle. Ahead of the a stone doorway appeared. It was twelve feet high and half that wide, three vast stones stood in a lintel atop a natural diaz of granite.

“How do we activate…” Beren said but before he could finish the thought the vines begant to writhe and then seemed to pour into the doorway until it was filled with writhing green. Abruptly the curtain parted and something stepped out of the gateway. It was huge, ten feet tall and covered in coarse brown fur. It’s mouth was huge and filled with yellowed fangs in uneven rows, like a lamprey and its eyes were pits of cold starlight. Two curved horns curled from its skull, one behind he other like a crest. The icy eyes pivoted to fix on Calliope and Beren.

“Profane One,” the beast rasped in the Firbolg tongue. Calliope realized she might be the only person alive who spoke it.

“Let us pass, in the name of Iskandrin,” Calliope responded in the same tongue, or her best approximation of it. The beast a Firbolg, a denizen of the deep earth threw back it’s head a laughed with a sound like boulders cracking.

“You dare speak the name of that dead wizardling? His spells lost their potency years ago, first I shall consume you and with your power I will open the gates and lead my people to feast on this plane once again!”

Calliope narrowed her eyes. These creatures should have been bound by Iskandrin’s spells to serve him. How could those spells have failed and yet the geas that bound her still be in effect. There was no time to ponder it. The creature charged at them, spreading its clawed paws wide to rend her limb from limb. Calliope lifted a hand and spoke the Aklo word for wind. A hammer blow of air smashed into the creature, hurling it through the air. It crashed against the portal and rolled into a heap. Shaking itself like a dog the Firbolg clambered to it’s feet. It spat out a word in its own language and hundreds of vines speared towards Calliope. She lifted her hand and spoke another word in Aklo. The tips of the vines flared into white fire, burning inch by inch as they reached for her, never able to close the distance. The air filled with a smell of burning greenery and smouldering leaves. The firbolg roared and charged at Beren while Calliope was distracted, eager to rend him limb from limb.

The lumbering monstrosity charged at him on all fours, it's misshapen face twisted in rage. It was eerie to watch how its limbs worked, the strength it took to launch its sheer bulk almost mesmerizing. Yet the most unnerving aspect of the beast was its eyes. They had the look of pits that were in the midst of consuming his soul. He briefly felt utterly weak under that gaze, as if he should just fall to his knees and accept his fate. This was a being from another realm, even more alien to him than ancient Calliope and all of her cosmic power.



Beren willed the clogging fear to leave him, and as the firbolg lurched at him like a bull out of nightmare, Beren sprang upwards, using his staff to help vault his form with his impressive strength. The beast screeched when its prey disappeared before its eyes. It barely felt the booted feet landing atop its back a moment later, but the two feet of iron that sank into its back was all too real. It tried to stop its charge, convulsing from the pain as Beren held the hilt for dear life, his feet planted and his chopping sword buried in the mass of furred flesh.

"An beithíoch thruaillithe bás!" Beren cried out in old Albani, before shoving off the thing's back before it rolled over and crushed him. He landed on the uneven terrain in a roll, and from Calliope's point of view, it mirrored the firbolg's unceremonious roll. They were both closing on the edge of the peak. However, Beren recovered first, the dust billowing from beneath his feet. Like a wolf on the hunt, he didn't waste time collecting himself. His head immediately snapped to the behemoth, the malformed thing finally halting its precarious tumble. It dug its too-human clawed hands into the stone, trying to find purchase. It had no idea the insane Sanguken monk was now the one charging its position, and it swung its hairy, worm-like head in time for Beren to hit it with all of his muscled weight. It roared in defiance, trying to redirect its limbs to swipe at Beren. It likely could have stopped batted him away if it was not off balance, but with a roar that rivaled the firbolg's cry, Beren shoved the firbolg further off its precarious position.

The beast was off balance, and its position gave it an untenable balance, but it was still an impressive feat of strength on Beren's part. The bravery, skill, and power he displayed was something only someone highly trained and heroic could ever hope to achieve. Not to mention utterly audacious!

What's more, it worked. The firbolg did not even cry out. It fell like a tree getting axed, and slowly, it fell onto the lower slope to tumble straight off the sheer drop. Beren watched as the firbolg fell to its demise, and luckily his back was turned. He couldn't notice Calliope's jaw dropping.

Calliope was already preparing the spell she would use to take her from this place. The moment the insolent… what? She didn’t really have a term or concept of who Beren was or where he was from and as such was critically short of adjectives. Monk. The moment the insolent monk was paste she could take to the sky and. The Firbolg tumbled out of sight and down the sheer face of the escarpment. The outcome was so unlikely it took a minute for her mind to take it in. She stepped over to the edge and peered down in time to see the ancient creature bounce of a jagged rock formation and impale itself on the top of a tree, the broken trunk protruding from its chest like an impaling stake. The drop was so far that it seemed like a child’s toy. The thing wasn’t dead, such things were not really alive to become dead, but it would fade from this plain over the next few hours. If the tree survived it might take some of the magical essence of the creature into itself, perhaps in fifty years it would become a shrine famed for its healing sap, or fruit that granted strange powers or visions. There were few such places in the world, because few such beings had ever been banished. Either there was more to Beren than met the eye, or the creatures of the void had grown weaker in the eons she had slumbered.



“You might have warned me,” Beren complained, his face sheened with the sweat of the brief combat.

“Do you wish that I give you warnings?” Calliope asked archly. Beren scowled at her then turned to the stone doorway.

“How do we use this thing?” Beren asked, reaching out to put his hand through the arch. It emerged from the other side perfectly naturally. Calliope drew a sharp fingernail across the ball of her thumb to draw a single drop of blackish blood which she flicked at the gate with a smooth motion. The droplet hit an invisible plane in the middle of the gate as though it held a pane of glass. It splattered outwards but instead of being limited by physicality it continued to spread until it filled the stone gateway with a darkness that twinkled with stars. Beren made some kind of sign, which Calliope assumed to be religious, perhaps a charm against evil or bad luck. Calliope stepped through the gate and vanished.



The blackness of space stretched in all directions punctuated by a profusion of stars, they were on a stretch of land which hung supported by nothing, perhaps a hundred feet wide on which a road of silver glass had been laid. The road stretched off into infinity, though at various points it widened or narrowed, in some cases wide enough to support ancient crumbling castles or strange alien-looking temples on misshapen islands. Nor was this the only road. The void was crisscrossed with them, some were on the same plane, others were below them. The side view made them look like triangular divots that a giant had taken from the earth with an immense trowel. One section, perhaps two hundred yards distance had a small mountain, down which a river poured to vanish into the void, its cascades shot through by uninterrupted starlight so that it shone with a bejeweled prismatic glow. Others were draped with grass, or vines, even small trees which seemed alien and unearthly. The experience was disorienting, not just because of the impossible landscape but because the transition was wrong, it was like falling forward into gelatinous mud which slowed you just enough that it robbed you of balance and perspective and left you chilled and trembling.



That moment of disorientation very nearly ended Calliope’s long life as a blade the size of a wagon bed swept at head. Beren stumbled into her back, knocking her forward just enough that it swept over both their heads. Calliope rolled and came up on her feet. A figure of black glass, ten feet tall and with a glowing blue sigil on its forehead lifted its great spear for a second strike. The figure appeared to be a single crystal, intricately carved with armor familiar to Calliope from her own time but doubtlessly archaic to Beren. It was female and its face would have been lovely if it wasn’t contorted in naked hatred. The spear arced down by Calliope threw up her hands and spoke two words in Aklo. There was a thunderous detonation which shook hundreds of jeweled fruits from a nearby tree in a glittering rain. The spear seemed to lodge in the air, quivering a foot above Calliope’s head. Calliope turned to smoke, surging skyward, or starward, like a hunting falcon. The glass woman, leaped upwards to follow but the semi-corporeal Calliope twisted around, expanding to grapple with the thing. Words tore from her lips, each profane syllable tearing at what passed for reality. Beams of blackness surged from Calliope’s hands but the glass thing deflected them away, the sigil burning bright enough that it hurt the eyes to look upon. It hurled its spear at the sorceress, blue flames playing down its length like a lightning bolt. Calliope writhed around the spear as it flew, like a serpent, then seemed to solidify, her hand now gripping the haft of the vast weapon, impossibly she turned it and drove it down at its owner, who thrust forth a palm to shatter the weapon, sending the smoke that was Calliope spinning off to the side. The glass thing drew a sword from its body and followed, but Calliope turned and crashed into it, the two figures meeting in a combat that looked physical but was anything but. The glass figure caught Calliope around the waist and lifted her high, eerily silent despite its apparent triumph. Ropes of darkness leaped up from the stone lintel on its lonely island and wrapped the thing’s legs. Calliope turned back to smoke and soared free of her enemy’s grasp. It tried to follow but the cords around its legs bound it like a leash. Calliope screamed one final word in Aklo and the cords contracted snapping the glass thing down against the top of the gate with the force of a mangonel. The glass statue struck the gate and exploded, showering Beren with fragments and making him shield his eyes. When he opened them, Calliope was standing beside him. Her clothing had changed into a suit of obsidian armor beneath a great coat that seemed to be composed of the ebony scales of some vast serpent.

“What…” the monk asked. Calliope stepped past him and picked up one of the fragments. It was the sigil and a piece of the creature’s face. The sigil was electrum laid into the broken volcanic glass that had been the thing’s forehead. Calliope turned it over in her hands.

“Leti,” she muttered. Beren stiffened, the names of the Seven Accursed were not spoken of.

“That is one of the Seven Shards,” he asked, “you… killed one.” Calliope wondered if he was thinking that she was one of the Seven Shards of Darkness and if she would be offended.

“Leti,” Calliope repeated, and tossed the sigil to Beren, it was still warm to his touch and seemed to writhe as if alive. “It is her soul anyway.” Beren dropped the sigil as though hot. It clattered rather prosaically on the glass road.



“If you have her soul is she not destroyed?” Beren demanded. Calliope shook her head.

“No it…you Xebrian is not good enough for me to explain, just imagine this is part of herself she left here without diminishing the whole.”



“Could you do that?” Beren asked. Calliope shrugged.

“Of course.”

“Why did she leave a piece of her soul to guard a doorway?” he asked, as though that were the only route into the topic he could find.



“It wasn’t here to guard the doorway,” Calliope explained, “it was here to kill me.” Beren stared at her for a moment.

“Aren’t you like… friends?” he asked. Calliope dissolved into peels of very human laughter, it took her several seconds to get a hold of herself.

“Oh you are serious?” she asked. Beren nodded, which sent her into even more gales of laughter.

“If you are quite done?” Beren asked pointedly, nodding to the sigil laying on the road. Calliope contemptuously kicked it, sending it skittering to the edge of the land where it tumbled off into endless darkness.



“Even during the days of the Quest, we seven competed for Iskandrin’s favor, competition was usually….vigorous,” Calliope explained. The Seven had spent as much time backstabbing each other as they had advancing their master’s cause, each determined to gather the most knowledge, to be the strongest, to gain any advantage over their rivals.



“So much so that she left a statue to kill you?” Beren pressed. Calliope pressed her lips together in thought.

“She knows that I… well it doesn’t matter. The more pertinent point is that she didn’t leave this here thousands of years ago, this is a new working. That means….” Calliope fell silent. All that time she had been entombed she had assumed that she was the only one of the Seven who had survived, that she had been specifically targeted to affect her Master’s return, but what if that wasn’t true. This spell was less than a thousand years old, which meant Leti was out there. Had she also been spared, had they all? And if so were they out there working to free Iskandarin? They would have to be, the same geas bound them as did her. It was probably only because Beren had freed her that his claim was temporarily preeminent. Could Beren have accidentally freed her of her obligation, or if not freed at least postponed the call?



“Your world, is it…” she struggled for a word in Xebrian, she would need to learn his uncouth language at some point if she couldn’t teach him to speak like a civilized person.

“…beset by great evils?” she finished. To be fair Leti was a clumsy amateurish evil in Calliope's view, but in these age perhaps the stupid trollop had managed to make herself queen of the world or something. Beren pondered it.

“No more than normal?” he replied with a shrug. Well if Leti and the others were free, they hadn’t yet had time to begin working their schemes. Perhaps she and Leti were the only survivors, or at least the only ones who had so far woken up. It was a lot to take in. Leti awoke early enough to find Calliope. It was likely she had been responsible, directly or indirectly, for scattering her cult, and she had left her assassin, knowing that Calliope would eventually try to use the gates. She would have succeeded if Beren hadn’t stumbled onto her. Killing Calliope was no simple matter, but the spear had been imbued with potent magics that would have managed it.

“That,” Calliope said as her mind refocused, “is likely to change.”

@POOHEAD189

The air was not stifling, like it had been in the jungle. In fact, it was a complete opposite in terms of environments, yet he still somehow felt it was just as difficult, if not more difficult to breathe. Perhaps the air was thinner here, the seemingly endless void spanning beyond imagination. It gave him a view much like the sea, except it was as if he could see to the very bottom of the ocean depths. The structures far away were strange and alien to Beren, but Calliope barely gave them a look. Perhaps they were from her time... or perhaps she has been to other worlds? He thought.

He stretched his neck for a moment, and did his best to steady his breathing after that brief insanity of combat. "And you care if it changes?" He asked her. He realized he was becoming far more casual with her than he intended, and she shot him a look as if she read his thoughts and agreed wholeheartedly.

"Perhaps..." she answered cryptically. Beren noticed she remained in the glittering armor, which was likely a bad sign of their current predicament, or at least a message that he should stay on his toes. "I care whenever my...brethren are concerned."

Beren felt he was growing slightly better at keeping up with her mastery of the archaic language, but he knew if she continued to speak that way, there would be questions. And if other scholars like him heard it and could decipher she spoke more fluently than any modern person should, there would need to be answers. As she turned away, he spoke up, drawing her attention back to him.

"Is there ...way... you can speak my tongue?" He asked her, curiously.

Her eyes were as sharp as daggers, the coat around her armor unable to keep the glittering depths of the scales from bedazzling the eyes. She seemed to consider something for a moment, glancing downwards and placing a hand to her chin. "Yes..." she said. "I would have to break the mind of a mortal and suck the information out of him. We often performed such rites when we were bidden to pacify a people. Perhaps we will get lucky on the road." She pursed her lips and her brow rose as if to say 'sounds like a plan.'

"Whoa, hey!" Beren declared, waving the thought away. He briefly glanced around, glad his words did not carry too far, before his eye met Calliope's. "We aren't killing innocents for that. Maybe if we run into an enemy, but I can not allow that."

"Very well, then you shall have to wish it." She said simply, crossing her arms. She tossed her head back, moving a dark fringe out of her eyes.

Beren opened his mouth, and then closed it. He knew she had him, but there seemed to be no victory in her eyes. Maybe she simply hid it really well, but still. Even if she could lie to him, and he was mostly certain she could not, he couldn't think of any other way to solve the problem. If they were to keep going, she needed to understand his language, and if they needed to speak privately, they could speak in Xubian.

"I wish you could speak my language." Beren said.

Calliope The Blackstar gave him a flat, unreadable look. Beren blinked, wondering if anything changed. Long seconds passed, and he glanced around. The muscled young man scratched his thick head of hair as he glanced to the left. "Did something chan-" He felt strong hands in draconic scaled grab his head, cold as death. It contrasted the warmth of Calliope pulling his head down and kissing him open mouthed. He words trailed off in an 'mmmph!' He felt a tingle on his lips, unlike the normal tingle one might get from a kiss. It was over in three heartbeats, and as Calliope pulled her head away, she breathed in deeply. Beren could not tell, but he believed he saw a bit of light from behind her teeth.

"Well," she said in perfect Akkanaein. "That was not as unpleasant as I would have thought, but nothing to write home about, either."

"You can spe-..." He pointed at her, dumbfounded, before her words caught up with him. Blood rushed to his face, and he flung his hands up. "I wasn't ready!"

She snickered, clearly enjoying embarrassing him. If she could not slaughter innocents, at least making him insecure would do. "If you say so, now let us go. We had not much longer to travel, but after that, I'll follow your lead."

“This really is shorter?” Beren asked as he trudged along behind Calliope. The strange path flowed by on both sides, often changing wildly every few hundred meters. Narrow strips of alpine forest, with snow dusted pines, butted up against salt desert or tropical jungle. One section they carefully crossed appeared to be ocean that poured endlessly into the void, the road laid atop a bed of crushed coral. Where the road bowed out slightly there were sometimes structures or ruins of structures, twisted towers, strange castles, or just filthy burned out lean-tos.



“Yes,” Calliope replied.

“But we have been walking for days,” Beren complained.

“Why would I lie to you?” Calliope asked. Beren gave her a suspicious look.

“Wasn’t one of your names ‘The Mother of Lies’,” he accused.

“No,” Calliope replied, her lips twitching into a slight smile at the irony.

“It feels like we have covered a lot of distance,” Beren continued doggedly.

“Yes,” Calliope replied. Beren was silent for long moments, merely trudging along. Calliope sighed and her clothing seemed to ripple from dark steel armor into a long, black, high collared dress robe. Beren recognized it as a distant ancestor of philosopher’s garb, familiar from statues and temple frescos, though few philosophers he had ever met filled it out quite the way she did.



“Your logic is correct but based upon a faulty assumption,” Calliope said pedantically. Beren swatted at a mosquito the size of his hand as it darted in to try to drain him of his blood. He let out a sign.

“Then by all means enlighten me,” he told her. Calliope’s ability to speak his tongue had not made her talkative.

“You are laboring under the misapprehension, that time passes at the same rate here as it does in your…our world,” she explained.



“Time passes more slowly here?” he asked. Calliope nodded.

“But for us it appears the same?” he pressed.

“To an extent, you can spend subjective years in here and you will never age, nor will you grow hungry or thirsty,” she explained and Beren realized that she was right, they had not paused to eat or drink in what felt like an entire day, nor did he feel tired.



“Immortality?” he asked. Calliope laughed and her garment shifted again, taking on the aspect of a ritual gown of deep midnight blue. Oddly it seemed darker than the starlit sky all around them.

“Of a sort,” she gestured at a ruined tower that looked like it might once have been made of fine porcelain, “why do you think there are so many structures, would be magi who tried to make the between their home and cheat death.”



“But it doesn’t work?” Beren asked, thinking of the countless ruins that dotted the insane landscape.



“I suppose there might be a first time for everything,” Calliope replied noncomittaly.



“What happens to them?” Beren asked, crossing to the side of the road to peer at a white object concealed beneath a bush. Closer inspection revealed a bleached skull.



“They happen to themselves, magi fight, the summon things they cant control,” she shrugged her shoulders, “and in the Between there are things that don’t belong in our world, other gates that lead to places we can’t go.”

“Like that beast I fought?” Beren inquired shrewdly.



“That is one such creature,” Calliope admitted, “better not to think about it, it may attract them.”

“Nothing is ever simple with you, I bet…” Calliope thrust her hand out and blocked Beren from stepping further. He flinched back and dropped into a defensive crouch but no threat presented itself.

“We are here,” Calliope announced and stepped off the road into the void.



Water was all around them. Calliope was momentarily shocked to find herself beneath salt water. She hadn’t survived as long as she had by allowing panic to rule her and she spoke a word of Aklo, forbidding the water to touch her. A sudden pressure against her ear drums vanished and she dropped six inches to the sandy bottom, the water fleeing from the silt around her feet until it was dry as death. A large silvery fish flopped around on the sand. Calliope booted it into the wall of water a few feet from her, out of disgust than mercy. Beren splashed into the bubble spraying water at her, but it peeled around her like rain being blown onto clear glass, refusing to make contact.



“Wha…” Beren spluttered, looking around a little wide eyed. Calliope’s clothing had altered again, waving in long silken strands as though she was the center of a kelp forest. There was light to see by, though it was dim, the surface was shimmering perhaps fifty feet above them. Behind them stood a stone archway, caked with barnacles and seaweed and beyond that a shipwreck through which colorful fish darted.



“We are on the bottom of the ocean?” Neil (or whatever his name was) demanded incredulously.

“Truly my master, your powers of perception are razor sharp,” Calliope responded dryly, in more ways than one.



“The world has changed since my time it seems,” she said with commendable understatement.



“We should be a mile or two from the where you said the city was located,” she made a gesture in a westerly direction. The sand sloped upwards, slowly but noticeably towards a beach.

“Shall we continue our walk?”

Once again, Beren felt very much like a mortal walking beside an eldritch being from time immemorial. He wondered if he would ever get used to the feeling, as she walked in her ethereal beauty while dark shapes both large and small lingered outside of his vision, he very much doubted it.

Though that was not to say the sea was pitch black. It was a soft, hazy blue that swallowed all beasts and objected twenty paces away. If there had not been a slope, he would have thought them lost forever, or at least he might have been tempted to use another 'divine favor.' As it were, he was just happy she was on his side, even if she was bound to it. Perhaps he could try extending an olive branch to her at some point, but then he realized how odd that was to think about trying to find a rapport with a malicious deity of abyssal darkness.

As he thought, he continued to walk with her, and the fact the sand beneath their feet was somehow dry escaped his notice until his boot bumped into something solid. He stopped, and glanced down to find an ivory white protrusion from the sand. What's more, there was something else. Beren noticed a deep, metallic surface that drew the eyes. He stopped and knelt down, batting the sand away. His heart began to race faster as he did so, and had Calliope not stopped in curiosity, he would have been engulfed by the sea for his carelessness. Yet he was enthralled almost, by his studious nature and the supernatural attraction of this object. Breathlessly, he realized the protrusion was a rib cage, and a huge one at that! Beren was a muscled man with a noticeably prominent chest when he stripped off his robes, but this man, this thing must have been broader by a foot and eight feet tall.

Beren glanced at Calliope for an answer, but she simply watched with an intensity to her dark eyes, though he felt he saw a glimmer of...something. Anticipation? He looked back down at the metal, and took it in his strong hand. With his considerable strength, he broke the ancient cord, and beheld a brass chest-plate; a pectoral. It was plain, in a way, but depth of the color and the way the soft light danced upon it was mesmerizing.

"How is it not rusted?" He asked, admiring it.

"There are many arcane crafts in this world, Beren Draiglwyf Mac'Riglas," The sorceress said elusively. Jocasta (I think that was her name...) thrust her head up in a curt gesture, signifying they should go. Beren pocketed the thing, and the two of them moved away from the ancient corpse, the bones swallowed by the sea as they began to climb the coastline. Another minute, and the pair stepped out of the surf and broke the surface.

Upon the beach, a shepard tended his flock. Two dozen sheep milled about, idly chewing the tufts of grass upon the high hill overlooking the coastline. One moment, the man had been looking at empty shoreline, save a party of soldiers a mile in the distance. Next he turned to look, an immaculately dressed, imperious woman and a stranger in an odd garb were walked away from the water, as if they had just taken a dip. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

The island of Ubtar had always been strange.

To Calliope’s ancient eyes Ubtar was a strange sight. It lacked the gold and lapis domed temples and fluted obelisks which marked a major city to her mind. Though several rather gaudy palaces were in view, there was no central sacred district around which the life of the city should revolve. Why did the city even exist if not for the worship and placation of the Gods? The center of Ubtar was, without a doubt, the port. It was sited on a natural bay from the shoulders of which two great break waters had been constructed from piled stone. The two arms partially overlapped to create a narrow channel for ships to pass. The arms were partially sheathed in cut limestone but the work had not yet been completed, giving them the appearance of partially peeled bananas or claws extended from their sheaths. A great copper cauldron stood at the point the two breakwaters crossed, a beacon to ships. And such ships! The harbor and its approaches were choked with them, larger and longer than those Calliope had seen in her own time. They had great triangular sails and banks of oars which propelled them through the water like skittering insects. The flocked to piers which jutted out from the shore like the fine hairs of a stinging lily. Teams of men were visible moving boxes of cargo or great amphorae two and from the ships.



The city lacked the grandeur of Direasaphon or Silvershod Tarais but it was big, especially if it was, as Beren implied, a regional center rather than a true metropolis. The smells were the same though, fish, and people, and the omnipresent smoke of cook fires. So many people gathered in one place. Given a large percentage of humanity had been annihilated on the Plain of the Black Ziggurat, the centuries since must have been prosperous indeed. That vaguely offended Calliope for some reason, how dare these cattle prosper while she was entombed in stone.

“Uhhh… Calliope…” Beren began, using her name with obvious trepidation. She whirled on him, eyes blazing and he stepped back holding his hands up in warding gesture which wouldn’t have saved him if he didn’t have a mystical bond with her that prevented her from boiling his blood where he stood.



“Maybe a little less of… whatever that is?” he suggested, pointing at her. She looked down to find herself covered in a coat of black dragon scale, great black wings sprouted from her shoulders and a wyrm-wrought war helm covered her head. She tossed her head and her clothing melted back into flowing robes of midnight blue, cinched at the waist with a silver chain.



“Fine,” she replied, her anger fading. If men had prospered, that simply meant more subjects to toil beneath her!