“Gramma Tir! Gramma Tir!”

  The door to an old cabin in the woods cried open, and clicked loudly shut. In came a young child, a bright-eyed girl with a burning smile, and fiery, curly hair. She quickly hopped into the room, heard the door lock itself shut behind her...

  “Gramma Tir, I saw a comet, I saw a falling star! It was big and bright and blue, it came down near here! We should go looking for—”

  Her voice came up short, then. Gramma Tir already knew about the comet, in a way. At least, she’d known the consequence of its landing.

  There she was in the corner of the dark wooden room, just by her rocking chair, some feet away from the bright fire. Just there, she stood, convulsing, grasping at her chest. Grasping at where a blade had pierced through her sternum.

  “Gramma—!”

  “Run, Alana.” The woman’s voice was hoarse. She commanded, powerfully, even through the dry, crackling that had become her once soothing voice. “Run, and never look back.”

  The man beside her cackled beneath his white mask. His black robes blended with the shadows of the nighttime cabin; his blade was slick and evil. “You may try to run, of course. Some of my men do enjoy the hunt...!”

  Another mask spun into existence a few feet away from him. “This girl — she’s the one. Get her.”

  Alana spun. One of them grabbed her arm, one of an apparent three, as she saw the final mask, felt the shadows all begin to engulf her. The cackling made her eardrums sting. The hands began to burn all over her arms and her neck, demons grasping at her, pulling her down to hell…

  “Something’s coming!” hissed one of the three.

  And then—SMASH!

  The window nearest to them, nearest to the door, exploded in a shrapnel of glass. A wolf burst through like a bolt with the shattering, and pounced like a boulder onto one’s chest, leaving him pinned, kicking and shouting from the ground.

  Alana remembered Tir’s command—run. With one last glance to where the old woman had collapsed to the floor, she spun for the door and made quick work of the deadbolt, grabbed the handle—and she was being dragged away again, left kicking as a man lifted her by her underarms.

  “I’ve got the child—”

  “Kill her, Armenius! Don’t just—”

  The room was spinning. One man was already dead from a wolf’s lethal bite into his neck; the second one stood with his blade poised at the wolf, urging it to keep its distance.

  “Kill her!”

  Her captor drew a knife. She saw her face reflected in the blade—she saw the fear in her jade eyes…

  And as he lifted it up… He hesitated.

  And from that, Alana grasped the handle herself, helped it find its mark… Within his very own chest.

  “You fucking…!” snarled the other man.

  Then the wolf was upon him.

  Alana threw that heavy door open and darted into the night.

  She ran, and ran…

  And I haven’t stopped running since.

  “Don’t slow down! Alana! Oy, you too, Tykas! Keep up the pace or I’ll be keeping your wage! Gremlock, you’re slowing!”

  The sun beat down on the dirt field below their bare feet.

  “Did you ever...” the boy beside her panted as he ran. “Figure out... What the comet was?”

  Their legs all ached, all just barely out of sync in their sprint.

  Alana shook her head, and her sweat sprayed with it. “No... No, ah never did.” Her short, curly hair bounced as she kept her sprint.

  “Tykaaas!” came the drill sergeant’s shout again.

  “Sorry, sir!” He picked up his pace, his short brown hair hopping left and right with every bounded step forward. “The killers, too… Never found out, huh?”

  “Ain’t seen ‘em since. Not yet.”

  The boyish Tykas looked to her in surprise. “You mean…?”

  “They wanted ta hurt me. They wanted ta hurt Tir. Ah reckon they’ll be back.”

  His face turned sour at the suggestion.

  When he spoke next, they were doing pushups against the same scorched dirt. Alana was smart enough to throw her red jacket down first, as were a few others, leaving them in their sleeveless white undershirts. “Is that why you became a soldier?”

  “Ah became a soldier… Ta feed me wanderlust.” Alana tried to catch her breath between pushups, tried to hide the Tal’eesian accent which always slipped out when she was exasperated, though she never had been very good at hiding it. “Always wanted to... see the world. My gramma told me... stories...”

  Tykas held his position for a moment. The sergeant shouted, “Down!”

  Then Tykas said, “I never wanted to see this shit, though. Everything in Four Walls is dead.”

  “Well… Soon enough... we’ll be in Acrypa.”

  “Acrypa?”

  Alana nodded as she went down once again. “You’ve got your map, haven’t you? One big circle we went in... Last stop... Acrypa.”

  “What about…” He tried to switch to a whisper as he pushed off the ground yet again. “What about Ocria? Wont they be...?”

  Alana did not lower her voice. “Ocrians don’t care about Acrypa, or else they’d have gone in themselves by now. It’s been decades since the empire fragmented.”

  “But…!”

  “Afraid of a few ghost stories… Tykas?” She smirked.

  He held himself up again. “Shouldn’t you be? You Tal’eesians know more about ghosts than any of us!”

  Her sweat dribbled down her face. She kept double the pace of Tykas. “We know… that spirits… are peaceable. Gramma Tir told me… every story she knew… They’re our partners… not our enemies.”

  A large shadow grew over them both. They both looked up to see the drill sergeant staring down, a wicked grin upon his mustached face. “Need I separate you two?”

  “Sorry, sir!” they both shouted in unison, and Tykas finally came up to speed.

  ...And once sit-ups, too, were done for the day, Tykas and Alana met again at the edge of the field, behind all of the other recruits on their ways to reunite with their buddies.

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  Alana lifted the bottom of her shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from her eyes. “Fuckin’ scorcher out, today.”

  Tykas chugged a waterskin, desperately fought to catch his breath. “I’ll say. It’s only going to get hotter. You can’t really think we’re going to Acrypa...?”

  Then another shout from the drill sergeant: “All hands to center camp! Grandmaster Soren would like a word!”

  Tykas and Alana exchanged a look. She said, “Go ‘n find out yerself.”

  The bells rang all over the military camp as the soldiers all approached the center of that beige-tented camp, down the dirt paths they’d dragged tools through to differentiate them from the rest of the death earth in that part of the world.

  In just a few moments, dozens of soldiers stood at attention beneath the blaring yellow sun, amid that barren plain of Four Walls.

  “Attention! Attention, my men and women,” demanded the red-robed grandmaster at the front of the ever-rowdy pack, bald with a long white beard, “I know you’ve all eagerly awaited my word on where we’re headed. The triumvirate suggested that secrecy might be of utmost importance in this matter, but we’re far from our friends now, both in Kyrine and elsewhere. I hope it does not displease any of you to hear that we will be entering Acrypa soon.”

  There was a slight rancor in the crowd.

  “I ask only for your patience —and if I’ll not have it, then let the republic you've come to serve have it. We’ve come a great, great many miles to this end; we’ve passed around from Ocria where the first of these talks went down with the Ocrians themselves, who forbade only themselves from venturing into that lost land. Then to Tal’eesia, where the Triumvirate themselves participated in spirit-warding rituals, as well as me and all of my peers, to ensure safety from the mythos which binds that dark place. Our last stop was Kyrine, and the grand city Celiana at its center. Many of you have joined since our first departure at Ocria. I hope many of you do not regret it, now. But we Kyrians know the legends of this place we seek to enter. We Kyrians have ever been the peacekeepers, the record holders of this great land. We, ourselves, have committed the legends of the lost empire to the parchment; we’ve recorded every emperor, every heir, every headline that ever crossed a stray newspaper within the walls of the once-great empire. We only intend to do the same, now; we venture forth not for land. But for legend. To record the stories that were lost in King Atlus’ final years. We seek to find closure!”

  There was a pause, and a small chatter. Grandmaster Soren looked around the crowd for approval, but found it scarce.

  “Tomorrow... Tomorrow, we venture forth into Acrypa. Tomorrow, the empire’s legend begins anew.”

  He turned away, and the speech was concluded. The crowd began to disperse. In those dispersing soldiers, Tykas stood for a long pause, grabbing frantically at his brown hair. “...She was right! Alana was right, we’re going into a dead country!”

  By the end of that first day, the camp had split into three groups:

  There were those who chose to desert.

  There were those who chose to stay.

  And there were those who chose to stop the party from ever setting foot in that land.

  Alana woke in her tent to the sounds of shouting and sprinting. She leapt quickly from her tent into the blazing light, watched as half of the camp was lit up in flames.

  “You fuckin’ bastards!” she screamed as she rushed for the nearest available buckets, hoped they were full of water, and began to throw the contents all over the flaming tents. “Tykas, up! Tykas!”

  She twisted left and right amid the chaos, looking for the boy.

  “Tykas!”

  Then the flap of his nearby tent opened, and he hopped out into the frenzy. “Alana!”

  She scoured him up and down—he had all of his gear, two satchels full of stolen food and goods, his sword strapped to his belt...

  “You bloody rat!” she snarled. “Escaping!?”

  “I can’t upset the spirits, Alana! Look around us anyway, this camp won’t exist by morning! This mission is—”

  “Rauuugh!” Alana threw herself at him, pinned him to the dirt.

  “Alana—!” he protested, but she began to bludgeon his face with her fist.

  “Stupid fockin’ kid! I took care of ya! I was gonae protect ya!”

  “Alana…!”

  She stopped punching, seeing that his face was already bruising all over. His nose was bleeding, broken sideways. “The spirits…” She fought to keep her accent under wraps again. “The spirits are good. They’ll protect us themselves. Get off your arse, you coward.”

  She stood off of him and helped him up.

  “I’ll be back— and if I find out you deserted after all while I’m gone… I’ll execute you myself.”

  To Tykas, the threat was obviously embellished… but that didn’t make him fear her any less. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Stupid fuckin’ kid…” And she turned to the frenzy, looked for any way she could put a stop to it.

  And right before her eyes appeared one of the arsonists, another girl from the camp—whitish blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, she was pretty as a sprite. But she’d always given Alana a strange sense, like she was playing at being better than the lot of them.

  Thankfully, she was small enough that Alana knew she could toss her around like a sack of potatoes.

  Quickly, Alana rushed her. She started by yanking the long pole out of her hands, a broken halberd with a flaming rag on the end, and she threw it to the ground.

  Then the girl spun her ire upon Alana. “You’ll all fucking die! You’ll damn the world if you upset the spirits, you’ll kill the whole damn world! The empire’s collapse will soon happen to all of Avalon, all war will reignite—!”

  Alana hit her hard in the jaw with a closed fist, and she was out, collapsed to the ground. “Damn loon.” She looked around again, searching for anyone else caught by the frenzy.

  She spotted, next, Grandmaster Soren, some distance down the main path. He was fighting back three soldiers—soldiers with knives. Soldiers trying to gut the Grandmaster.

  “Fuck!” Alana doubled back for her tent, quickly glanced to make sure Tykas was still there, and yanked her long halberd out from beside her bedroll.

  Then she rushed for Grandmaster Soren.

  “Grandmaster!”

  All four of them looked up in different shades of horror as she dashed in. “Alana—!”

  “Leave him the fuck alone!” She swept her halberd through the air with all the force she could muster. The first soldier had a shield—but he missed the block, and the halberd slid like a knife through butter past his waist, messily bisecting him, spilling his blood onto the dirt.

  The man behind him parried the continuing halberd blade with his short sword. But Alana twisted her body even more fiercely, forced her weapon past his weak guard, and slipped it through, into his ribcage.

  The third soldier, behind Soren, rushed with a scream, his sword aloft.

  Alana left her weapon embedded in the man as he fell. Then she drew her own short sword from her waist. With her offhand, she caught his hand on the down stroke and plunged her blade home into his chest. He gasped and gagged, then keeled over like the other two, leaving Alana stained in his blood, and with a dripping sword in hand.

  Grandmaster Soren stuck his hands out for her, as though trying to console her, or offering a hug. “A—Alana! Are you okay!?”

  “This’s what we train for. Isn’t it, Soren?”

  “But…!”

  Alana grabbed the handle of the halberd, held the body down with her boot as she forced it free from his ribcage. “This is the job.”

  “No…! The job was a scouting expedition—!”

  “It looks like first, we have to earn their permission.” She nodded her head toward the rest of the flaming camp, and the madmen dancing like devils in the firelight.

  Soren saw something in her eyes, then. Something foreign, something he hadn’t seen in all his life.

  A war hasn’t been fought in two centuries, not since the fall of the old empire… But this girl… She has a killer’s instinct! There's something inhuman in her, something seen nowhere else in Alaron!

  Alana turned away, quickly dashed off into the haze of smoke encroaching their camp.

  “Alana!” He reached out for her back.

  Then Tykas began to approach from within that same haze. “Don’t worry, Grandmaster.” His expression became strangely resolute. “I’m here to protect you.”

  “Tykas, you…?” Soren was perplexed by the state of his face.

  “Alana talked some sense into me. I made a promise to stay loyal to Kyrine. I won’t forget that agreement.”

  And Soren was lost for words.

  The soldiers of Kyrine had weapons, of course, but blood had scarcely been spilled in the centuries since the last war. Most of the soldiers didn’t even really know how to wield their weapons; they were decorations more than anything. There was a sense of harmony between all of the remaining kingdoms, and none wished to breach that trust. It was deeper than any war cold or hot, it was a trust that was everlasting, had been everlasting since the dawn of Alaron’s men.

  For Alana, the only violent crime she'd ever seen or heard of had been committed against her own grandmother. It wasn’t something that came naturally to the peoples of Alaron, it wasn’t something anybody ever even really thought of.

  But now she’d taken three lives in the span of a night. And somehow, it didn’t feel so bad. It felt easy, even. It felt… good.

  It felt mostly like something was gnawing up from inside of her—a voice calling for that blood to spill.

  And she hoped that by morning, she’d have spilled enough to be satisfied…!