ARTHUR LEYWIN

Leaning against the base of a squat apple tree and chewing on the last of its ripe fruit, I stared out at the fields south of Blackbend City.

Once these flat plains and low, rolling hills would have gleamed gold with endless fields of wheat, but large swaths of farmland had been crushed flat by the tent city now ringing Blackbend’s southern edge and the ten thousand or more troops stationed there. The gray-and-black clad soldiers moved with stiff, short steps, and I saw many heads bent in conversation and furtive glances being cast about. More than once, ranking officers stopped to shout at a group of gossipers as messengers rushed about with a frantic air.

After a brief jaunt to the Relictombs to ensure both Regis and I were at full power, we’d followed the wide swath of churned sand that marked the Alacryan army’s passage through the desert and into the foothills separating Sapin and Darv. The tempus warp I’d recovered from the Wraiths would have made it a simple matter to teleport the distance, but I needed to ensure that the Alacryan force didn’t split or divert to a different destination.

Despite their multi-day lead, the soldiers who had retreated from Vildorial had only recently arrived. From my distant vantage point, with my senses heightened with aether so I could more clearly follow the bustling of the many soldiers, I tracked the comings and goings of the war camp for a while, content to just watch as the Alacryans stewed in their own uncertainty.

It had already been a couple of hours while Regis and I waited under the apple tree. Unforunately, there had been no sign of the retainer and regent, Lyra Dreide, or of the two Scythes. They would have made a convenient prop for the spectacle.

It felt good to be in the field again, an enemy in front of me. My return to Dicathen had been defined by furtive rushing through underground tunnels and living in fear for my family and all the Dicathians under my protection. I was tired of skulking about and hiding. This was a war. It was past time to fight it.

But I could only do so now because of the Lances. The damage to their cores, forced on them in the same ritual that bound them to their respective kings and queens and catapulted them to white core, had been healed. Varay, Bairon, and Mica were, at the very moment, back in Vildorial, meditating over the remains of the mana in the Vritra horns I’d acquired in order to grow stronger for the first time in a very long time.

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