"Keep your eyes on the back of my head, you hear me?" cried Dorin from ahead. "Don't you look down for a moment!"

Easy to say.

His voice came oddly muffled as though he were speaking with his head within a large kettle. The huge iron helm he wore was close enough to it, anyway. If the bridge indeed snapped and they fell to their cold, pitiful deaths, horses and all, Farren would blame it upon the ridiculously heavy armour the vampires had donned to protect against the sun.

The bridge creaked and squeaked underboot, her fingers tightly clasped around the thick ropes on either side. Each step sent jolts through Farren's heart, the packs strapped to her back threatening to toss her off into the blue void of ice down below.

She had always been known as someone who held her drink well, so she assumed this was what being truly drunk felt like. The world was a spinning snowglobe and the sun was in her eyes, the weight of the rations on her back and disorientation addling her mind. A swig of blood-beer would do her good, but they left the city a league behind. Damnation!

Yet to those of Valston this was but child's play, for they trotted on along the bridge, carrying far larger packs, some even hauling thick coils of ropes, ice axes and metal hooks.

"You got this, alright? You can do this..." Rendarr was chanting behind. "Cake-walk, folks. What's some flat hills got on you, man? Nothin'. Alright? We soldiers of Kinallen-"

"Thank you, but can you stop? You're distracting me, for Rhilio's sake!" she said, thinking if crawling on her hands and knees was a better idea.

"Wasn't speaking to you anyway," he muttered, bringing one hand to his heaving chest. "You got this, Tonlin, just--don't look down. Easy..." His voice took on a higher pitch next and he grabbed the back of her cloak. "Gods, I looked down! Why'd I ever speak?"

Xenro and Gray both stood on the other side watching them with all the rest of the soldiers who had already made it across, frowning as though trying to awaken their telekinetic powers.

"The hell you're soiling your breeches for? Barely a hundred paces, this crossing," shouted Gray, making a cone with his hands.

"And the drop is a hundred times that if I miss a step, fool!" Rendarr shouted back, in his own way of flirtation perhaps.

The bridge swayed again, driving Farren and Rendarr to the verge of holding each other and sobbing. Someone large and tall was coming up behind them, wreaking havoc with their heavy footsteps.

"Walk, idiots!" said Klo. "And as for you, Farren, better keep your cool. Getting agitated will likely invite withdrawal. Foxward reported to me what happened near the gates."

"Damn you, Foxy," she muttered.

When Farren dared to look back, Klo was already uncoiling a length of rope and fastening it around Rendarr's waist. It tightened around hers too the next moment, and off went the sergeant, striding in the lead, her two squadmates ambling in her wake like ducklings. Her steps were firm and unfaltered as ever. They made it across and the march resumed.

"Don't embarrass me in front of everyone like that," muttered Klo, tossing the coil of rope over her broad back.

"Who, me?" said Rendarr, "I wasn't scared or anything. Just trying to cheer up Farren a little. Poor thing's scared of heights, you know?"

"Am I? Then who was it snivelling into my back?" Farren made to smack the back of his head, but her knuckles clanged against his helm instead. "Sweet mother of fu--"

Hands fell on both their shoulders. Klo gave them a smile, dangerously sweet, while her fingers tightened in an iron grip--Farren could swear a bit more of it could've crushed bones.

"Any more stupidity," she said, "and I'll throw you off a cliff. Have I made myself clear?"

Their hands flew up in salute. "Aye ma'am!"

Needless to say, the march went fairly quiet for the rest of the day without them bickering. After half a dozen or so suspension bridges, Farren got over her initial fright to some extent.

A silent war raged between Captain Walric's sappers and Captain Rivera's patrollers when it came to cleaving their way through and over particularly unclimbable rocks.

The folk of Valston seemed to be able to scale the mountains with naught but ropes and hooks, their movements surprisingly agile, and the knots they tied could support the weight of heavily armed soldiers without fail. While on the other hand, the sappers cut through stone as though it were butter, laying planks and bridging the way where ropes failed. The competition however, gave rise to a smooth crossing, with them covering nearly a quarter of the distance only on the first two days.

Both captains would be found watching them with pleased faces, sometimes even having a smoke together.

The squad leader of this operation, Klo, would be occasionally seen staring up, searching the skies as though she expected a dragon to swoop down at any moment.

It was she who first spotted a Drisian camp, by the end of the first week of travel. "Down, at once!"

Soldiers took cover and horses were hid faster before her words could reverberate among the rocks.

Farren crawled to the edge of the mountain pass, where Klo crouched. Far below, beyond the blue shadow cast across the land by the Drakhall, could be seen a dark speck, in the shape of some barracks clustered together. The pale green Drisian flag rippled on a high pole. The villages were but mere vague shapes along the south horizon.

"Doubt we'd be spotted from this far up," said Klo, "but best not take a chance."

None left their cover that day, and the journey did not resume until darkness fell.

Even though sufficiently masked, when assisting them with the crude work of hauling along the climbing equipment and clearing a path from splintered stone, Farren found the magic of the battlemages similar to Kilford, the earth-wizard-turned-smith from Silver Knife Square.

No storm hindered their way, and in the nights they camped in sheltered nooks, without having to wake up cold and find their tents blown away. It became the talk of the mealtimes, especially among the younger vampires about how the mountains had never been so calm before and that Edis was likely becoming more merciful. But the elders claimed there had been no Drakhall at all before the Great War. The Silverhaart warriors were having none of this and, clutching their pendants, attributed it all to the nameless deity they served.

Sitting upon a lonely rock on the edge of the firelight, Xenro drank deeply from his tankard, grimacing at the strong taste as it went down. The days of travel had graced him with a windswept look. Stubble coarsened his gentle face, long hair piled high up; he resembled more and more the weather-beaten appearance of the statue from Kinallen.

A pair of reddened and raw knuckles appeared on the edge of the rock, followed by a shaggy red head-- what came next were sounds of much struggling and scuffling.

"Tea?" Xenro offered grinning as Farren pulled herself up and curled into a pile.

"I'd rather drink horse-piss than that hogwash," she said.

"That...can certainly be arranged." Xenro raised his tankard to gesture toward where their mounts were tethered.

Farren grunted, trying to resist a strong urge to cut off and sell a limb to Atruer for a bottle of good ale. He did tell her she'd come back to him. Why not right now?

But Xenro broke the moment by saying something far more grim than the God of Despair himself.

"I have been... thinking--"

"Oh no, that's not good."

He gave her a sharp look before continuing, eyes up at the stars. "The Apocalypse would have to come, I believe."

Had she heard ol' captain saying that, she'd have no trouble brushing it off as ramblings of old age. But coming from a God imprisoned as an aftermath of the first Apocalypse, this was alarming. Farren grimaced. "We're perched on the land's shoulder with cliff faces on all sides. Be grateful if you had some good news to share."

His brows furrowed as he thought hard, fingers fiddling with the grip of his sword which lay across his lap. "The way things are going, I believe the coming of the new Apocalypse would benefit us."

Farren's grin was sour. "I was under the impression the Apocalypse meant the end of the world. But seeing as one cannot find a drop of decent ale in this company, I am ready to die."

But Xenro's mind was elsewhere.

"No one has to die," he said. "I am only speaking of the initiation of the Apocalypse, not the disaster itself. To announce the Apocalypse, Father would have to relight the Torch of the Divines, thus granting us Gods access to the fullest extent of our power-- and begin the...show."

He grabbed her shoulders, staring right into her soul with wide eyes. "You know what this could mean for the world?"

There ought to have been a well-learnt sorcerer in place of this soldier who barely knew her letters. The celestial knowledge slipped right over Farren's head.

"Aye," she said. "I understand everything."

"Draedona is enslaved by the Chains. Edis, from what I can gather, is trapped within his own realm. There is naught I can do for them, not when I myself am weakened and forsaken," he said, measuring each word. "But the Torch of the Divines know no such discrimination. Once lit, I gain my powers again, and so would the others. Together, we may stand a chance against the Chains."

Farren thought she was beginning to get the hang of it. "Chains, eh?" she said, "you sure you can snap the links just like that?"

"There is yet a final piece left to this picture," he said, getting to his feet and hoisting his sword back up on his shoulder. "A young man of Drisian blood whom I must find."

Farren only stared. There were times when she believed she knew him like the back of her hand, like an old drinking buddy, but then moments like these, when he spoke of strange things, standing atop a crest with glittering peaks on all sides and clouds swirling down below, she was reminded how little she truly knew him, and how the land was so much bigger than a little frontier village and its rickety inn.

Nonetheless, Farren rose to stand by him. The gold and sapphire ring Xenro had once given her for summoning him glistened around her finger as she looked at the stars through the jewel. Tonight, it shone with an ethereal glow.

A chilling night breeze ruffled her hair, not so majestically it did Xenro's, though. Her tangled bush whipped this way and that and obscured her vision.

The world was indeed unduly cruel to plain mortals such as she.

"I'll help you find this man," she said, angrily raking a hand through her hair. "Wherever he might be."

✦✧✦✧

Turned out, she could barely find her own balance.

Those few hours of marching on level ground when they would come across old trails occasionally were all Farren looked forward to, for her climbing skills refused to move an inch upwards, much in the way her eyes refused to look anywhere but down below.

"If we're going to get back through this same route," said Farren, panting after one particularly long hike, "tell me and I'd dig my grave right here. Lots of nice rocks around, and the cold will really preserve my--"

"Oh, for the love of the Gods, shut your trap." Klo climbed up next, shielding her eyes with one arm and looking skyward. "If all goes well, we should receive a message from Her Highness regarding arrangements of our return after we've made our descent. Alright?"

"A messenger in these parts?" Rendarr gave her an incredulous look. "They gonna fly over these peaks or what?"

Klo gave Farren a knowing look. "Ah, perhaps they do have wings."

Days dawned and days went. The company trudged along the steep shoulders of the mountains, the Drakhall a great white wall behind them shrouded in mist.

The winds slowed and bald patches of earth began to peek through the snow as they made their descent, which progressed slow with all the horses and packages of supplies. Closer and closer came the land that once seemed to hide unseen beneath the clouds. Below lay a wide valley, treeless as far as eyes could see, bare except for large, weather-beaten rocks jutting out, stark white like jagged teeth.

The northern Autumnwind plains.

On the afternoon of the day before the final way down, Captain Rivera stood at the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the lands beyond. Gleaming, crimson eyes gazed out of the thin slit of her helm. The remaining folk busied themselves in pitching the tents for the night.

Farren stared off into the distance as well, seated on a nearby log, having finsihed her job of starting a fire. Dry leaves crackled merrily at her feet. Smoke coiled, redolent with a woody scent.

The apprehension of stepping into enemy territories overpowered her urge to set foot on plain, level ground, and there came the worry again, clawing around in her guts.

"The lands you see once belonged to Midaelia. To us," said Captain Rivera, looking over her shoulder at Farren. "Can you imagine?

A bitter smile crept across her face. "I don't have to. I come from Larton."

The captain sighed, taking her helm off as the last rays of the sun vanished beneath the far horizon. "I see. From the Culling to the Drisian conquest, things haven't really improved much, have they? The Autumnwind plains remain witness to much bloodshed."

"Would there--" Farren winced as the faint ache in her stomach shot up, searing. Such aches and pains were naught but reflections of her own repressed worries, the healers said. But effects of the withdrawal heightened even a scratch on the knuckles to a whole new plane of pain.

She forced her eyes back on the distant lands, before her own anxiety would aggravate the pain further. "Would there come a day we would reclaim these lands, Captain?"

Captain Rivera smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. "That I cannot tell. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, just as none of my victorious company on that fateful night had any idea that with the dawn would come their gruesome end. Only time will tell."

Almost as though by reflex, Farren's eyes flicked to Xenro, hammering the pegs that held the tents aloft with such strength, dust flew around him.

'The Apocalypse would have to come, I believe.'

Gruesome end indeed...

Farren wrapped her cloak around herself and shivered, yet not half of it had to do anything with cold.

The Northern Autumnwind plains lay barren and cold for leagues, deserted and not a guard post nor watch tower to be seen. Grateful as Farren was to her squad leader for taking such good care of her axe, it seemed all for naught, for the few guards at the shabby outpost at the mountains were all they'd seen of the Drisians so far. Not that it was a bad thing.

Yet the deathly silence of the plains as they marched put the soldiers at unease. They knew full well this was only a small part of northern Drisia, uninhabited for its harsh climate, but it seemed this was all that was left of the kingdom, left to rot as a punishment for raising the dead.

A heavy mist rose to cling to the air, one that the morning sun failed to clear. Captain Rivera led them through the haze in silence, a spectre in search of lost memories.

Days grew longer as spring seemed to draw closer once again, the nip in the air finally giving away under the warm breeze. Still, all that failed to lift the leaden weight in Farren's heart as she trudged along. And what the vampire captain said at the dead of the next day nearly stopped it from beating at all.

Captain Rivera froze in her tracks, bringing her dark mount to an abrupt halt. So did the rest. Sounds of the vanguard readying their weapons pierced the air.

The captain raised her hand, motioning them to stop and took out the map Rodormann had given them. Calculations, some crossed out, some underlined, crowded its back-- estimations she'd made each night to see how long the journey would take them.

"Tread with care," said Captain Rivera. "Best not stir the dead awake."

Captions Walric and Lieutenant Evander dismounted, the former rushing to her.

"What's that supposed to mean?" said the mercenary captain, disbelief in her voice.

Captain Rivera gave her a sad smile, folding and tucking the map into her belt pouch. "Only that I have kept my word," she said. "The land you stand upon is the Site of the Culling. And before that, the last battle of the Apocalypse raged here, back when the Drakhall had not raised its many silver heads. We have reached the burial grounds of the Chosen Warriors."

Silence fell over the company. The dun grasses at their feet rustled in a sigh of a lonely wind that rose ever higher, tearing apart the stringy clouds over the horizon. The sun went down, leaving a bloody smudge over the distant hills. Xenro stood motionless as though turned once again to stone.

Farren crouched low, half expecting to discover shards of bones, or broken links of chainmail. But to no avail. Those who perished here had become one with the earth, the grass thick and long over them. And then there were those within the barrows, far beneath and beyond reach, yet.

A jangle of heavy armour made her look up, and there was Captain Rivera, kneeling.

The captain took off her helm and leaned close to the ground in homage to her fallen comrades, matted black hair brushing the dirt. Farren could not even begin to comprehend what it must have felt like, to keep silent about such a tragic defeat and strange discovery for two hundred years.

"Forgive my blatant lies!" cried out captain Rivera, addressing the empty lands as if the ghosts of her fellow warriors stood around her. "I do remember you all, and you will remain in my memories for as long as I live."

None interrupted her as she spoke, the ancient warrior making an apology that was long overdue. Her voice remained solemn, but at the same time moments away from breaking.

"I did what I had to, to keep the enemy from digging up your graves. And to protect those who lie beneath," she said. "Lend us your strengths in this time of strife."

None came up clawing through the earth to accept her apology. Only the wind howled.

Dorin Farler was the first who came up beside her, mirroring the same gesture. One by one, the vampires of Valston got down on their knees.

When the captain got up, the first stars of the eve had begun to flicker up in the sky. "We are not digging through trenches again to get inside. Let us find the front entrance to the barrow."

Traces of an old trench lay to their west, but nothing was left of the pit captain Rivera and her last remaining comrades had dug so long ago. But locating the barrows turned out to be not as difficult they believed it would be, for Rodormann's assumptions were close to accurate, and mounds of earth lay in a somewhat regular, ridge-like fashion along the west side of the land, which gently sloped upward.

Behind one of them, grown over with bushes and thickets, stood a rock cairn which the vampires managed to track down within the next six bells with their razor sharp vision. Farren got to work with the rest of Kinallen's soldiers, slashing through the vegetation and tossing aside rocks to clear a way in.

When the torches crackled to life, there stood before them a gateway of stone, crudely hewn stairs leading down into the darkness of the burial chambers of the Chosen Warriors of old.

A figure came up to stand beside her in silence, cloak fluttering and shoulders hunched underneath the weight of their sword. Farren did not even need to look. "Ready?"

"To see the corpses of my friends I sent out to battle?" Xenro's voice came out hoarse and raspy, sounding almost alien to her ears. "Never. Not in an eternity."

✦✧✦✧

Farren had known no denser darkness, and that was coming from someone who walked the enchanted alleys once. Inside the barrow the walls stood bare, high and cold, the dark impenetrable, as though all the nights since the day it was built had cloistered within it.

The passageway descended deeper and ended in a central chamber, with doors leading to separate crypts. The walls here appeared to be laden with shelves, perhaps stacked with old earthenware. A closer look with a torch held aloft however, told a different tale, one that made her blood run cold.

In the recesses along the walls, there lay... corpses.

Mostly dust and bare bones they were, but armed to the teeth all the same. Those which looked more well-preserved showed signs to have undergone some sort of embalming. In the separate crypts slept warriors within stone coffins, armoured in magnificent mails, their emblems telling of their ranks of generals and commanders.

But that was something to be left for the historians and alchemists to marvel upon-- for they had now found what they came all the way for.

Beside each corpse, there lay weapons tucked in their sheathes. The scabbards had begun to splinter and fall apart, but the green glimmer of the crystalline blades through them was not dulled with age. Paying homage laid aside, a search ensued.

They had found the hidden weaponry at long last.

In the quivers slung across bony shoulders, there were arrows, of the same material of the Sacred Blades. In small sheathes strapped to their owner's bodies were daggers, similar to the one Farren had. The armour and helms placed in alcoves, with melted tallow candles on top of them were equally wonderful, unlike any other metal they had ever seen. Abandoned weaponry filled the crypts to the brim everywhere they looked, all glittering like jewels in the torchlight.

The key to defeating the Vasaeni were within their reach at last, yet hesitation crept into their steps as they made to reach for it.

"Well, what are you waiting for, Captain?" asked Lieutenant Evander as none of the mercenaries made a move to grab the weapons.

Captain Walric gave no command. She stood in still in the middle of the chamber, fingers reaching for her pendant.

"Stealing from the dead, eh?" she said. "Feels like a fool to say this, after all we've been through to get here. But will the Nameless One forgive such a deed? Digging up their graves of those he held dear?"

A tense silence followed. Save for one's long, heaving breaths.

Farren turned to find Xenro standing before one of the recesses, his back turned to the rest of them. His hair hung low over his face, hands clutching the edges of the stone so hard it seemed it would crumble under his touch.

She wished she had the power to truly perceive what his grief felt like, to send an army off to battle, only to come back to find their shrivelled corpses after centuries. Even an apology sounded cheap to utter. Her hand shook when she made to reach for his shoulder. It did not land.

"You ask for forgiveness?" he said, turning and shattering the silence pressing down upon them.

"What else?" Captain Walric shrugged, looking down at her hands. "What we are about commit is no less than sacrilege."

Xenro cast his eyes about the walls, all the shelves cleaved into the stone and the last remains of the warriors of old and gritted his teeth.

"I believe it is the Nameless One who owes you all an apology," he said.

The captain's eyes narrowed on him. "What?"

"Whose fault is it that the Chosen Warriors failed?" he spat, "all he did was sit idle and watch!"

"Now listen here," said Gunvald, coming forward, "I know you are at a rebellious age and all that, lad, but you don't speak of the Nameless One like that."

Xenro laughed, but it was not a pleasing sound to hear, not in this corpse-filled, desolate barrow in the middle of nowhere. The shadows at his feet grew longer. Folk seemed to shrink away from him, but not the captain. She held him in a death stare, something firing up behind her dark eyes. The captain's insignia was still attached to his cloak.

"Speak, new blood," she commanded.

"You said the Nameless One cares only for the result, not the way it is achieved," said Xenro. "Yet why do you hesitate now, Captain?"

"If your God was content with you doing whatever it took to survive all these years, then why would he be displeased now?" Xenro went on. "He will allow this, if he knows what is good for his folk. The dead need no weapons."

Gunvald opened his mouth to speak again, but the captain cut him off with a gesture.

"You are one odd fellow, you know that, Xen?" said Captain Walric.

A look of alarm crossed his face at that. "I do not follow."

"Call me a crazy old bat all you like, but I'm starting to think it was no coincidence that you just happened to bump into me at the checkpost, looking as though you've just been through hell and back. Fate led you here. So I'll leave this one up to fate, as well."

Protests rose from the mercenaries, but the captain paid heed to none.

"So what will it be?" she asked. "Would you dare to rob the dead?

Xenro took a deep, shuddering breath. Muttering an apology in the ancient Midaelian tongue, he strode to side of one of the bodies and slid the sword gently out of the bony grip of its long-gone wielder. He handed the sword to Captain Walric.

"Only so I may avenge them," he said.

Yet the moment did not last long.

Footsteps thundered down the steps, and Rendarr burst through the doorway the next moment, panting and out of breath. But when he looked up, his bloodless face was that of a man who had already accepted his fall.

"We've been spotted," he said.

No more questions were asked, for the next minute overflowed with the sounds of the soldiers pulling out the Sacred Blades from their time-worn scabbards. Amidst the commotion, Farren came across a single bladed axe, its sleek grip and shimmering blade seeming to calling out to her.

When they rushed outside, a seething line could be seen along the west horizon, a host of some sixty odd mounted Drisian soldiers, headed their way.

"Looks like they aren't the only ones who spotted us," said Klo, smiling despite everything and raising her sword skyward.

Dark shapes speckled the sky, blotting out the stars. Scores of ravens flew towards them, and below, hundreds of carriages, sorcery-powered and lightning fast. Fire blazed at some of the wheels.

"What on earth..." Gray wondered out loud. "Those are--"

✦✧✦✧

"Dark Saints carriages?" said Marches. "You jest, Your Highness! Surely we are not going to rob a company warehouse?"

Princess Lysandra gave him a look of only mild surprise, swinging her gaze away from the soldiers of Brittlerock who surrounded the Dark Saints warehouse down at the market district. Sergeant Linder stood in the lead, a raven perched on his sword hilt. The company headed for the northern Autumnwind plains would reach their destination soon, if they had not run into much trouble.

"Oh, no! I'm not going to rob anyone," said Lysandra. "But intsead, my fiercely righteous Royal Sorcerer is going to convict the owner for his heinous crimes and seize the carriages. Won't he? Here's the warrant."

She thrust a parchment scroll into his hands. Marches sighed and considered putting a heavy padlock on the door to his tower from now on, to keep out trouble such as a certain roguish princess.

"Either your father will hang me," he said, "or I'll do it myself."

Begrudgingly, the sorcerer strode in.