Sometimes, that which is promised comes true, but not in the way we desire it to do so.

Dwarven Proverb

"You've found something?" The harsh annoyance contained within that question could not be unheard once Lord Hedric had given it a voice. As the mountains reached skyward above them, he his posture and tone demanded an answer.

As Lady Noranda allowed her fingers to caress the hard stone surface before her, his skin bristled with the dawning of a new day. He did not weaken as he once would have under its force; his recently strengthened bond with General Nightwing and now the renewed connection with Lady Noranda's demon granting him the strength to endure the sun's stare. Hood drawn back, he allowed his golden hair and pale skin to bathe in the burgeoning sunlight despite his minor discomfort. The red glow behind the blue of his eyes was significantly less pronounced in the light of day.

"Perhaps," Noranda replied to his question. She stopped at one particular section and lingered, sensing something about how the magic in this place differed from the surroundings. "The illusion here has recently been disturbed. That disruption has created a weakness. One, I believe, we can exploit to our advantage."

"Are you saying that you found the way through? That you can break the spell?" he growled.

There was an entire legion of soldiers from his armies standing at the ready, although silently and several hundred yards back among the foothills. They were waiting for orders as Cassandra galloped up to where the Blood Lord and the Fallen Angel discussed the latest discovery. "Is there any news I can deliver to the troops?" the general asked, circling her mount in a tight rotation as it hesitated to get too close to either of them. Like it could sense their inhuman auras.

Noranda grinned. "I think so. We should be marching soon on the Mount of Carnak. Go. Ready your soldiers. Inform the riders to get their dragons aloft and to move swiftly. We must reach the shrine before your sister and her rebellious companions."

"As you wish." The general wheeled and headed back to the soldiers under her command while her own eagerness at the news remained caged and well hidden behind a business-like facade.

High above came a roar. A glint from fractals of sunlight off crystalline skin the color of emerald accompanied it. The demon Lady Noranda had summoned a second time circled and remained ready to act on her orders. Glassy wings that seemed so fragile pulsed up and down in powerful strokes. It gave a second cry of eager willingness to be let loose.

"I am tired of waiting." Lord Hedric mirrored the tenor of the beast's cries as he folded his arms while Lady Noranda continued to peruse the face of the stone.

"Patience yields rewards," she reminded him. "Like all things, our knowledge of them progresses as time moves on. This spell was complicated the hundreds of years ago when it was cast. And it still is today. But, with what we have learned in the decades since, it can now be more easily understood how all the pieces fit together. Thus, it can be broken. All that is required is to find the keyhole to the lock. Here." She pushed her finger into a region where the magic was particularly frail. And as the tip of her finger vanished into the stone that seemed so very solid elsewhere, the fallen angel undid the binding holding the illusion together.

In a cascade of shifting stone, the spell fell away, beginning from where she stood. And not just where she stood, but everywhere. The entire length of the wall of mountains reverted to as it had been before the elves had worked their magic and hidden the Tear away. And as the magic shattered and ceased, the world shook in a violent fit as it remade itself in a sudden metamorphosis and revealed the truth behind the century's old lie that had been woven.

As the tumult rumbled off into the distance, more of the range of mountains changing, Lady Noranda folded her arms into the sleeves of her robes, staring down the narrow passage now visible before her. It wasn't very wide—four feet across at most. But it was enough for soldiers to begin entering the mountains single file and to march on the Mount of Carnak.

"Behold," she said. "The way is open."

Sheala did not exactly know what prompted Korg to roar the guttural and ear-splitting yell he sent forth. But she suspected it had some connection to the ground shaking as though the world was tearing itself apart.

Sayra's horse bucked, kicking the silver-haired elf out of her saddle into an undignified sprawl onto the ground as it quaked and sent a horrifying shudder through her body.

"Look!" Brentai called and pointed. "The mountains!"

Sheala, leading the group, could not comprehend how swiftly the landscape was changing around her. Stone was here. Then it was there. And in other places it wasn't any longer. All at once, a wave of energy rushed towards her to reveal what had not been there moments before. It was as though Sayra's medallion instead of only influencing the areas immediately around them now affected the entire land and negated the illusion entirely.

As that wave passed by Sheala, two steps of her horse's hooves ahead of her, the ground beneath her mount vanished. The world dropped hundreds of feet to a valley of jagged rocks below. She tried to halt her gelding's rising panic, but it had already taken one too many steps. Beginning to fall forward, her mount's head led them over the cliff and gave Sheala the most perfect if not macabre view of her own pending doom.

Her medallion vainly warned of her soon to be realized fate, but there was nothing she could do. Face whitening with fear, she tried to get off her horse but could not do so in time. Sheala felt gravity grab hold of her and start pulling her down, even as her mount struggled with foolish hope and scampering hooves to cling to the cliff.

A sudden pull on her arm ceased her descent toward death, but not her gelding's. As she hung there, slamming against the stone of the cliff once, her arm ached from the force by which she'd been stopped. Sheala watched as her horse whined the entire way down until hitting stone and rendering into two pieces on serrated teeth.

Taking a moment to process that she'd been saved, Sheala looked up. Korg had her by one of her arms with both his hands. "My hero," she smiled at the otaur.

To which Korg snorted and hauled her up to the ledge.

Brentai ran to her, but before he could say anything, Sheala beat him to it.

"See that?" The thief dusted herself off. "That's how to save a damsel in distress."

Arms folded, it was obvious Brentai did not much care for her flippant attitude, or the slight intended to portray him as not caring enough about her enough to be the first to assist her. "I don't see no damsel. Just an ass—"

She flung herself at him, pushing her lips onto his and silencing his escalation of the spat. She wrapped her arms around him, and he her.

Their romantic embrace lasted long enough, and the passion in the display was so intense, that Korg's and Sayra's uncomfortableness with the situation could be felt. The elf and the otaur even cast each other a wondering glance when it extended far longer than either of the onlookers expected. Or felt it should, considering their situation with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Not that Sheala particularly cared.

Eventually the thief pulled away, her forehead firmly against Brentai's and out of breath from the display of her affection. "Don't you ever question how much I love you. No matter how much I yank your chain. Do you understand?"

"You know," he replied, "if you did things like that more often? I wouldn't ever have to."

"Ahem." Sayra cleared her throat. "If the two of you are finished?"

Brentai looked at Sheala, then to the elf, and once more back to Sheala. "I think we're done."

Sheala pecked Brentai's lips one final time. "For now." She winked and then brought up the question in the fore of her mind. "What the heck just happened? It's like the entire illusion we've been fighting against just up and quit on us. And at a pretty inopportune time, too. If you ask me."

Sayra looked off as though lost in thought. What she was doing was actually trying to find out what the fairies knew and could tell her. "Lady Noranda broke the spell," she informed those present. "Imperial troops have entered the mountains and are marching on the Mount of Carnak as we speak."

"Without the illusion to protect the location of the shrine, and your medallion as the only way to find it, we've just lost our biggest advantage." Sheala huffed at the realization. "There'll be dragons searching from the air while we're stuck here on the ground."

"Well, the good news is that we're there." Sayra pointed up onto a nearby mountaintop. It was slightly higher than they were, but it was massive in girth. Beyond only the edges, however, nothing else could be seen clearly of the peak from their vantage. "Well, almost there."

Between them and the mountain remained a series of deep ravines and smaller peaks with no way directly across to their goal. At the base of the Mount of Carnak there was a thin forest, while snaking up the northernmost side was a tightly wound road that looped and doubled back on itself and uncountable number of times to ascend the slope. From this distance, it appeared to be little more than a game trail, but Sheala was sure it was much wider and that was only a delusion due to the distance between them and it.

"Well, I'll be damned." The former thief stood there, gawking. "End of the line, I guess. So, we're just going to go over there, open this shrine, find some all-powerful rock, and presto, save the world."

Brentai laughed. "You certainly have a way of making things sound a lot easier than they actually are."

"Brentai's right." Sayra pulled herself back into her horse's saddle. The animal had remained remarkably calm after its initial scare. "Still a good two days' journey left, I'm guessing."

"But you know the way, right?"

The elf nodded. "The fairies will guide us. Have no fear of that. Although, I do now wish I'd have kept a piece or two of my cloak instead of giving the two remaining pieces to Anthony and Reane."

"Good thing we've got an extra horse again." Sheala added with a somber note, remembering the loss of Gregory.

Sheala approached the mount that had belonged to their now lost companion. With her's now at the base of the mountain, this one passed to her. The thief wasn't sure if that was something to embrace or not. Considering that Reane was no longer with them, and Gregory had met a less than desired fate.

She took its reins, stroking its mane as she spoke to it. "No offence, boy. But I wish you were a dragon. Would make this a lot easier, that's for sure."

Cassandra's eyes engaged the mountainous landscape below her. Efficiently scanning every inch, and stiff in the harness holding her into her dragon's saddle, the air at her high altitude possessed a biting chill and was thin enough that her lungs burned from not enough oxygen in each breath. She suffered through it only because of the vantage she was able to obtain from this height.

And it paid off as she spotted exactly what she was looking for after two days of searching. Just as the latest day was fading away.

Among all the mountains and their peaks, there was one that had been sliced off into a massive and flat plateau by human and elven hands centuries ago. The surface had only one imperfection to its smooth summit, a towering outcropping of stone near its center.

The general placed her dragon into a steep dive. Embracing the wind as it rushed by, she pulled up only upon reaching the level of three other riders searching with her, but at a lower altitude. "Corporal," she called to the man riding a black-winged beast like hers. She then pointed toward the Mount of Carnak. "Over there. Take your men and tell Lady Noranda we've found it. Lead her, Lord Hedric, and our troops here."

The soldier squinted and saw the monument to which she referred. "Yes, ma'am." And then he added. "And what will you do, general?"

There was a thin column of smoke rising up from the thin forest covering the base of the mountains in this area. She'd noticed it only a moment after she'd seen the mountain they'd been methodically searching for. Cassandra smiled, absently touching the spot on her chest where her now missing medallion would have hung. "Me? I'm going to go and prepare a proper welcome for my sister."

Leaning right, Cassandra didn't wait for a reply. She rolled her dragon in the same direction as the mountain and peeled off from the other riders.