The Assault on Overlord's Isle

[Vanion Shadowcast]

II. The Rebels' Arrival

While the moon slowly turned an ominous shade of red at its visible edges, Vanion watched his foes appear. He could make out their shapes through his conjured fog, as they stepped from the nether and into his private paradise in space. A slow smile of anticipation and thrill touched the corners of his lips, but he did not yet disturb the newcomers.

Claire stumbled to her knees, disoriented by the transportation magics that brought them to the Necromancer's Sanctuary. So, too, did the others plod through the fog, its veil laying as much in their minds as over the soft grass of the mystical isle. As they found each other there, Zack murmered, "Good", relieved that they were no longer separated from one another. Still, Vanion merely watched them, knowing that they were not yet aware of his presence.

"Are we all here? Who is hurt? And where is the girl?", Shadow asked cautiously, as he stepped forward, brandishing ArCane, his staff of wizardry.

Vanion idly wondered at what girl the goodly elf was speaking of, but only for a moment. It was then that the would-be heroes found a gift that the Necromancer had left for them, as the mists began to thin. In the grass before them stood a crucifix planted into the soft earth. Vanion reveled in watching the others find the dead man nailed to the thing, still adorned in its t-shirt that read, "Not My Overlord".

"That, I do not know", Rachael finally answered Shadow, as she stepped up to the crucified figure. She ran her gloved index finger along the front of the dead man's t-shirt, tracing a line of velcro that held the front of the shirt together. She quirked a dark eyebrow, and slowly peeled back the front of the t-shirt from the velcro that held it. Beneath, where the victim's torso should have been, was only a precise, surgical vacity. The Necromancer had taken great care to remove the inner organs, blood vessels, tissue and bone. It almost appeared as though the man's innards had been scooped out by a giant melon baller. Vanion guffawed, silently, at their discovery.

Claire rose with a soft groan, and set her eyes upon the crucified man. Vanion could smell the bile kicking up in the back of her throat as she choked out the words, "The hell?" The others warily inspected the body. Napoleon scurried forward a few tiny steps and sniffed at it.

"Do you know who it might be?", the pirate-rat asked, curiously. Rachael did not answer. Instead, she spoke a low oath in a tongue foreign to Vanion, and gave Napoleon a weak pat on the shoulder. Meanwhile, the eerie fog continued to fade away at the Necromancer's will, and he shared with them the truth of their full surroundings. They looked on in awe at the small island of grass and lush wildlife, floating in Rhy'Din's upper atmosphere amongst a sea of stars. Below, the world looked peaceful, almost like a painting.

Vanion cared little for the surprised and thoughtful mutters of the rebels, as they tried to make sense of his paradise. He turned his eyes thoughtfully to the star ocean above him and merely waited there, some thirty yards away, sitting upon the carved stump of a small tree set beneath the ugly, blighted boughs of its greater brother that loomed over the isle at its center. The Necromancer was wearing but a suit of ebon, elvish leather armor, with his sheathed longsword resting against his lap. He lifted a nearly empty bottle of red wine to his lips and took a hard pull from it.

"Mmmh. You're finally here. I was worried that you'd be late to supper", Vanion greeted the others without looking away from the heavens, his soft, honeyed elvish lilt carrying to them by means of old, bardic magic.

Claire visibly bristled when she espied Vanion, and shifted protectively to the head of the group of adventurers. "I'm not particularly in the mood for your games, Vanion. Get to it." Behind the pink-haired sorceress, Napoleon stepped back with uncertainty at the appearance of the golden elf.

Vanion took another pull from the wine bottle, and swang up to his feet with one deft motion. He tossed the bottle carelessly aside, letting it shatter helplessly against a sharp stone on the ground. With little more than a half-interested glance, he regarded the others, and dared a dashing smile. With a dramatic sweep of his left hand in a wide gesture towards the crucified man, he ignored Claire's demand and retorted, "Do you like my work? Just one last careless moment of fun before everything changes. I took my time with the poor sop."

Shadow gritted his teeth against the soul-sick feeling the blighted tree that Vanion stood beneath induced upon him. "You have much to answer for, Drakhar", he said simply, without moving more than to draw his sword. The goodly elf's eyes flickered with a blue flame in each pupil, and his words echoed with resonance, a little magic of his own. Zack shifted away from the others, giving himself some space as he drew his own sword.

Vanion's brows lifted slightly. 'So, Shadow knows my true name', he mused silently to himself. Still, it would not do for him to change his plans at this point, regardless of this unhappy surprise. He held onto his arrogant smile, using it as a means to bait his foes.

"You are certainly right, Shadow", The Necromancer relented in an all-too-agreeable tone. "I suppose that you've come to cast judgement upon me. And what am I to do, out-numbered and out-gunned against so many powerful beings?" He quickly turned his palms upward and set his wrists together, as though he was offering to turn himself in.

"Very well. I give up. I know when I am beaten", he exhaled in a helpless tone. Within his breast, he could already feel the Ascension's magic taking hold. His very soul burned with a power unlike any he had ever felt in his long life. He need only delay these fools for a few more minutes before the black ritual would be finished.

Above, the moon entered into a full eclipse of the nearest star. The light cast around the celestial body's corona turned a blood red, and it cast the eerie color below, overtaking the entirety of Vanion's island, and those who had come to stop him.

Shadow was not deterred by the eclipse, or Vanion's display. "We have come to end your reign of terror, and prevent your ... ritual. You brought this about, not us, Drakhar", he said, gripping his sword a little more tightly.

"Of course", Vanion answered, in his most humble tone. "There is another possibility."

Zack scoffed. Claire rolled her eyes, but humored her enemy anyways. "And what would that be?", she retorted in turn.

"It's ... possible. Just possible. That you are here, because I wanted you here", Vanion explained softly while tapping his temple as though he were having this thought for the first time. "It's possible that every door you opened, every step you took throughout my Keep, I allowed for. After all, it certainly would have been easier for me to just not leave a portal to this island at all, yes? It's possible -- no. I'd say that it's ... probable ... that you are here to witness my ascension to Godhood, itself. That I've brought you here to kick your sad sacks into submission, and force you to watch your world burn from above. Oh, and then that I'll kill you lot last of all."

He indulged in his monologue, and did not feel guilty for it in the least. He felt tickled, whether it be from this farce of an uprising, or from the otherworldly power that was now starting to course through his veins. He laughed heartily, and perhaps a little madly, and shrugged his shoulders in an inappropriately casual way.

"It's possible", he amended, even as the rebels' apprehension grew at his words and increasingly malicious, sing-song voice. He finished his proposal with a sudden shift of tone, speaking lowly, murderously, "That you've severely underestimated just how powerful I am."

And beneath the crimson moon, forbidden energies coursed through the crazed Necromancer's body. And though the world below may not have known it, its fate became tied to Shadow, and Claire, and Napoleon, and Zack, and Rachael -- five unlikely allies who would face Vanion and determine the course of history, for good or for ill.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

III. The Battle in an Ocean Black

With a soft sigh, Claire shook her head at the Necromancer's deadly threat. "Vanion, Vanion, Vanion", she answered. "So short sighted. Do you understand what you're trying to do here?" She gestured around while keeping her eyes on set cautiously on the golden elf. The cogs turned inside her mind, and plans were formulating, but she knew that time was not on her side. Her best chance lay with playing to Vanion's arrogance -- to keep him talking.

"It isn't about power or revenge or whatever it is you're looking for", she continued. "Do you honestly, truly honestly believe that you will accomplish anything except increase the void in whatever is left of your soul?" While Claire distracted Vanion, Shadow spent his time marshalling his energies and preparing for the worst. His eyes began to blaze with flue fire, and that flame was mirrored in Arcane's crystal handle. Silently, his lips moved in reverent prayer.

Vanion's smile faded, and a look of vulnerability touched his pale blue eyes. His gaze flickered downward and side-to-side upon the soft grass at his feet. Quietly, he answered Claire's question, "You're ... right. This won't change anything. Won't make things right." As the Overlord replied, Zack waited, letting the fingers of his left hand flex.

"No matter what you do with the future, it doesn't fix the past", Claire spoke solemnly, taking care to keep herself between Vanion and her allies. "Tell me, Vanion, or Drakhar, whichever you prefer. If you make the world hurt the way you've been, will that make you feel better?"

Quickly, suddenly, Vanion's right hand grasped the hilt of his sheathed blade and flicked it free with a snap of his wrist. He laughed, then, boldly, at Claire. With a flourish, he twirled his green-glowing longsword and took a step towards Claire. "Oh, wait! Once I'm a God, I can shred space and time like tissue paper. I COULD change everything. Little good that it'll do you, here, I suppose. But then again, Claire Farron, you mean nothing to me." As the Necromancer advanced, the spirits of an army of dead souls began to swirl about his blade as though it were a nether-vortex, and its green glow became the only thing on the Isle not washed in the crimson hue of the Blood Moon above.

Rachael stepped forward, standing at an angle designed to let her protect Claire and Napoleon. Claire pulled a short kukri and called back to Vanion, "It doesn't have to go down like this, Vanion."

Vanion taunted her in turn, while taking steady strides towards the intruders, "Don't mistake me, Princess. I want to kill you. I want to kill you the really slow, hard way." And then sound gave way to fury, and the battle began. Vanion felt as though he could barely contain the power surging through his body, and with a simple breath, he split his physical form into five identical bodies -- one for each of the self-righteous champions. All at once, the mirror images chaged the party, with glee and bloodlust in their beautiful, blue eyes.

"Merde", Rachael whispered, a moment before she and each of her allies engaged the Vanions by hand, by spell, and by blade.

Vanion simply smiled, knowing in his broken heart that this was his time. He would destroy his foes, set the world of Rhy'Din on fire, and use the Nexus to rip through time and space. Every sacrifice he had made could yet be justified. He could turn back the clock, as a God, and save his wife, his son, his world. He could give Mischaelna, his daughter, a kinder fate than the curse of vampirism he had set upon her. Every murder he had ever committed, every act of barbarism, could set right by his hand. He need only destroy Rhy'Din and destroy these five upstarts, and billions of lives long lost over the past one thousand years could be saved.

And for a time, it seemed like the Necromancer's final wish would come true. He quickly overwhelmed Shadow's swordplay with his own, proving that he had gained the title of Overlord by more than mere chance. And while Shadow was beaten back and started to wane, poor Napoleon and Rachael fared little better against the golden elf in a fight of fisticuffs.

Yet, it would not prove such an easy battle for Vanion to win. Claire and Zack held their own against the powerful Necromancer in a war of vicious spell-casting, and began to push back against his power. Feeling momentarily vulnerable, and growing painfully aware that he was not yet a God, Vanion focused the majority of his power into facing Claire and Zack's own powerful magics. He felt one with the stars and the heavens and the grass and the song of his blood, more connected to the ocean black around him than to tending to his spells.

And so, Vanion began to take the upper hand in the mage-battle between Claire and Zack. The five champions of Rhy'Din buckled and cried out in pain at the Necromancer's fury, but would not relent. This angered the golden elf, their refusal to accept their deaths with grace. For him, victory yet seemed inevitable.

And then, in a moment of great strength, Claire unleashed a fireball upon one of the five mirror images of Vanion so great that the Necromancer shattered like glass against its might. Claire's heart skipped a beat at her small victory, and she rushed to Napoleon's side, the piRATe nearly beaten to death by another of the butcher elf's images. Despite both Claire and Napoleon working together, fist-and-paw, against Vanion, the Necromancer still held the upper-hand.

And then, slowly, things began to unravel for Vanion. First, Zack shattered the image of the golden elf that he faced with a vicious psychic assault. And then, Rachael's gloved fist smashed through the face of another image, causing it to crack and explode against her sheer force. Together, the would-be heroes turned the tide on the original form of Vanion, rescuing Shadow from the Overlord's cursed blade.

It was the tiniest of the allies, Napoleon, that brought down the Necromancer as he cried out, "Get him Zack! Get him Claire! Get him me!" The original form of Vanion shattered like the others.

Claire muttered, nearly spent, "Good job ... Napoleon." And there was a mere moment of calm after the storm, the space paradise quiet as the Blood Moon yet looked down from above.

"Everyone alright?", Zack asked once he managed to catch his breath.

"Oui", Rachael answered.

"Think so", Napoleon responded next, after giving his hungry magical sword Mac a couple of testing taps as he looked warily about.

"Yes", Shadow lied with a nod to Zack, feeling the toll of the battle in every joint of his body.

Claire kept her back to the group, and shifted her gaze quickly about the little Isle. "Y-yeah", she finally chimed in, exhausted. "That's ... it?"

Zack pushed up to his feet and looked onward to the Blood Moon. "Have a feeling the party is just getting started", he told Claire. He was right. Suddenly, the shattered shards of Vanion's mirror images were lifted into the air by a sudden vortex. They took form high above the allies, and Vanion was once again himself, adorned in a flowing ceremonial black robe. His cursed sword floated before him, the tortured souls captured within screaming in their unbearable eternal agony. Black lightning reached like an abomination's tendrils from the Blood Moon towards Vanion, and his flesh began to glow with an otherworldly, crimson light.

"You've ... managed to impress me", the Necromancer admitted as he felt the God within him grow. "But it is no matter. My hour has come!" His megalomaniacal cry was followed by the summoning of powerful magics. Vanion knew nothing but eternity coursing through him, every spell one with the Nexus. Again and again, he barraged the usurpers below with incredible magics.

And yet, somehow, they withstood. Whether it was through the blessings of unseen Gods who watched over Rhy'Din, or by strength in their finest hour, they stood against him.

"Yes, your hour has come", Shadow retorted as he joined the fray. Vanion was enraged at their insolence. What were they, but petty mortals standing in the way of a God?

"Mmmh. Shadow", Vanion retorted without actually speaking, his voice echoing within Shadow's mind. "I've dreamed of what you would look like, with your flesh turned inside out."

And yet, still the allies withstood his might, spell after spell battering at their defenses, even as they returned mystical fire upon Vanion. Claire pressed her hand against her sternum, producing a faint pink glow and a rose-shaped crystal in the palm of her hand. With a flench of her fist, the crystal shattered, leaving only velvetine rose petals and a glowing rune beneath her feet.

"Soon", Claire spoke softly, and then turned an odd smile up towards the Necromancer in the midst of the battle. And then, with the others, she blasted the floating Overlord with the elemental might granted to her by the Isle of Magic.

Vanion nearly fell from the sky, then surprised at his foe's power. Instead, he began to laugh quite madly, already preparing another assault. "Are you so certain that you are doing the just thing? I can change things. In another world, like yours, your other yous would never need to die to me. Think of the lives that I will save!", he called down to them, desperation finding its way to his heart. He was losing, and he knew it. He was not yet a God, and his time and power were falling short.

"It is not your place to interfere with the natural balance", Claire's summoned Eidolon, Odin, intoned in a deep bellow.

Shadow agreed, "We are certain, Drakhar." Napoleon chittered.

"Power ... IS the natural balance. It is the sum of all things!", Vanion bit back, attempting to reassure himself of his own righteousness more than anything else.

Odin raised a clawed hand, crackling with electricity, and fired off a bolt far larger than Claire could ever summon on her own. The Eidolon bellowed once more to the Necromancer, "Then it shows how little you know."

"Vanion. You are sad and delusional. You have let your past and the pain of it cloud your mind. You have no idea what true power is", Zack retorted, looking up to the mad elven mage.

Gritting his teeth, Vanion dug down deep. The earth below split at the force of his magic, and the island began to break apart as demon-fire reached up from its surface like dozens of geisers exploding at once. Napoleon nearly fell into a fiery crag, but Shadow quickly reached out to protect his friend with potent holy magic.

"You ... will watch her die first, Zack", Vanion hissed down to Zack, still recovering from Odin's vicious attack on him.

"Then I will make you pay for eternity for it", Zack answered with a hiss of his own.

Feeling his failure, pettiness took the Necromancer. He spat out more hateful words, "Napoleon will live, though, on account that I find him amusing. I will enjoy watching him race through my maze, endlessly. There are so many experiments that I have planned for you, rat!"

Napoleon quivered, Vanion's promising summoning his greatest fear. "Do not listen to him", Shadow said reassuringly to the magical rat. "He knows he's losing."

Napoleon looked to Shadow, and then back to Claire. With a small voice, he whispered to himself, "Heroes always win. Heroes always win, right?" And then, with a hint of sadness and disillusionment in his voice, Napoleon called up to the Necromancer. "Vanion. You aren't a hero." The piRATe released some of his own special magics and joined his friends in the attack on the Necromancer, then.

Vanion reeled in surprise, blood trickling from his lips. "You're ... making ... mistake", he whispered weakly, a moment before he lifted back into the air and summoned balls of inferno and razor sharp blades to rain down upon his foes. He felt all of his hopes to make things right, to undo the evils of his past, falter in that moment. Shadow's magic continued to protect those below, and Vanion fell from the sky like a ragdoll, exhausted and defeated. Both Necromancer and his cursed blade crashed into the fiery ground.

Napoleon groomed his fur, doing what he could to smooth out singed hairs. The others simply watched on at the defeated Necromancer.

Vanion did not move, at first. Then, the golden elf stirred. Mumbling, his fingers reached weakly for the sword that lay only a few feet away.

And the Blood Moon shone down from above, finally having reached the prophetical eclipse's apex.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

IV. The Death of the Overlord

Pain. How often had Vanion pretended that he was above such a weak, mortal feeling? How often had he stared into the shadows of the witching hours, alone, brooding, his stomach churning? Pain and regret had become his silent bedfellows over the last millenium, and failure his only living child.

And yet, never had he relented. The ritual was complete, with the Blood Moon at its apex; if he could merely grab hold of the Sword of Souls, it would shatter at his word, and he would teach his foes the foolhardiness of interfering with a God's desires.

With his staff, Shadow struck quickly before the elf's hand could reach the hilt of his sword, and Vanion was knocked unconscious.

With a groan, Claire pushed herself up to rest upon her knees, her Eidolon now gone. She slowly drew her pistol and stared at the defeated Necromancer.

"If we don't get any food tonight, I know where we can go!", Napoleon offered to his magical sword 'Mac', who was pestering the equally magical rat's thoughts with requests to eat Zack, and maybe Vanion too.

Rachael rose then, slowly, her body wracked in pain. With a simple motion, she bent down to pick up the Necromancer's blade, a distant haze cast across her emotionless eyes. Unceremoniously, she rose it above her head, ready to thrust it downward into the unconscious elf's still body.

Zack glanced at Rachael and encouraged her, darkly, "Just chop his head off." But Rachael began to laugh, the sound strange and unsettling and wild. With a hard kick to the side, she turned Vanion's body over onto its back, rousing him. The elf stared up weakly at the woman wielding his cursed blade.

"Rachael. You are better than this", Shadow called over to her, grimly, not being able to bring himself to slay the Necromancer.

Claire turned her pistol towards Rachael, and countered her murderous intent more aggressively. "Drop it", she warned. Napoleon scratched his head, confused by the sudden turning of friends upon friends, while Zack growled and started towards Vanion himself.

"Zack. Stand down", Claire barked harshly at her friend before he could reach Rachael and the wounded elf. Zack growled again, this time at Claire, but did as she asked. The Sorceress rose to her feet, then, unsteadily, her lips pressed into a grim line as her pistol's muzzle stayed trained on the Watchwoman.

For a moment, Rachael faltered, looking conflicted. Then, a slow smile touched her lips, the expression alien and mad. "Father", she said in a voice that was not her own. In the voice of the ghostly elvish girl that had followed them through the Overlord's Keep and disappeared when they reached Vanion's Isle. In a voice as sweet as honey, and sweeter, and too sweet.

Rachael, Mischaelna, didn't look back over her shoulder at Claire or the others. Instead, she continued to speak in the ghost's voice, her words naught more than a wicked whisper. "No one will ever hurt us again." Vanion's eyes opened wide, and fear joined pain and regret as his final bedfellows. Shadow moved quickly, swinging his own blade to attempt to disarm Rachael. But the woman, possessed and murderous, was too fast: she plunged the cursed sword downward into Vanion's heart, and slayed him in cold blood.

Shadow, pale and grim, spoke quietly, firmly, while keeping his wary gaze upon his possessed ally, trying to reach her through Mischaelna's ghost, "Rachael, if you do not drop that foul blade, you will be made to do so." And then, as quickly as she had been taken, Rachael was freed. The blade slipped from her grasp with the deed down, and she dropped to a knee, teeth gritting against the bile that rose in her throat. Shadow sighed in relief, even as the other adventurers drew near, and said, "No one touch that weapon. It must be destroyed."

Rachael traced the scar along the left side of her face, and turned to look, a little vacantly, towards the PiRATe. "Merci", the word slipped, stunned, from her lips.

Softly, Napoleon answered her, "Sometimes, little girls have the greatest magic and strength of all."

"Perhaps they can rest now", Claire said quietly, standing over the macabre scene.

Meanwhile, Shadow pondered on destroying the cursed sword. "The ritual has not ended. It is tied to the sword", he mused aloud.

Zack looked down at Vanion's corpse and give it a light nudge with his boot. "How?", he asked, with a side glance to Shadow.

"Burn the body and the blade with it", Claire whispered. "Last rights for the elf, and good riddance for the ... thing." She looked upon the dead Necromancer. His body was already going rigid, and his dead stare lingered upwards, still set upon Rachael. And there, in the creases of his eyes, the faintest sign of his true age, Claire saw regret.

Shadow murmered, his eyes distant as he mystically studied the weapon, "The blade contains all of the fear that Vanion engendered in his last acts against the city." A moment later, he concluded, "Destroying it might trigger the ritual."

Claire offered the weary suggestion, "Then remove it from this realm?" Above, the crimson light from the Blood Moon was fading, as the super-natural eclipse slowly died.

Not knowing what else to do, Shadow knelt near the blade and began praying, in an obscure elvish tongue, for the souls of the terrorized and the departed, exhorting his Gods to aid in their passage to a more peaceful afterlife. Rachael joined Shadow from a few feet back, speaking her own prayer for the dead in Latin. Zack, not one for praying himself, bowed his head in respect and murmered a mixed form of the Alliance language. Claire folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes. Her addition to the joint prayer wasn't verbal, but it was there, in her heart.

Napoleon simply watched, fascinated. Slowly, the green glow of the cursed blade began to flicker and dim. Faint cries of pain turned to relieved sighs, and the heroes felt the souls of the dead move on.

Shadow paused in his prayer, then, for a moment. Tears were forming in his eyes as he turned his head to his friends and said, sadly, "There is one soul left." Napoleon's ears ticked forward at that.

A moment later, Shadow knew which soul lingered, clawing its way at life, rebuking death with all of the power and hatred and fear that had consumed it in life. Shadow focused and resumed the prayer, his tears flowing freely now. Even for Vanion's soul, Shadow would pray, and he did.

Above, the Blood Moon was nearly finished with. As Shadow prayed, a faint, merry giggle of a young girl tickled the ears of the adventurers. There was something slightly off about the girl's laugh, her sound, but when the last sliver of crimson passed from the moon's corona, the eclipse ended, and the ghostly laughter with it.

The cursed sword before shadow's green glow was gone, then. The sword shook slightly, of its own volition, as the Elven Guardian prayed. "Vanion, go to them ...", he whispered in the common tongue. Claire and Napoleon placed their hands upon Shadow's shoulders, lending him some of their strength.

"Drakhar", Shadow continued as Napoleon's eyes glittered and watched.

"You are free now, Drakhar. Go and be at peace", Zack murmered, adding his own words to Shadow's."

Rachael spoke too, in French, "Soyez en paix."

And then, a slight gust of wind passed through the bubble keeping the Space Isle in tact. Vanion's sword turned to ash, and almost wistfully, the wind carried that ash up, up, and up - beyond the boundaries of the mystical haven, and into the star ocean beyond. It was over.

But, Shadow's eyes fluttered open a moment later, and he watched the ashes drift away. "She?", he asked aloud. But Vanion's spirit was gone with the others then. Shadow turned thoughtfully, a little warily, to his allies. "She will take my place, he spoke to me in my mind, before Seldarine took him."

"Uh oh", Napoleon noted.

"Time out", Zack broke in, as Shadow slumped back exhausted. "She will take my place, meaning what exactly?", he continued, eyeing the goodly elf.

Claire answered him with a gentle determination, "So long as there is good in the world, there will be evil, too. If any seek to take his place, then we'll be there to stop it."

Shadow agreed, speaking to all of his allies at once, "We must remain vigiliant."

Napoleon chimed in with a merry complaint, changing the topic, "I'm starving. Mac is too."

Zack peered over at Napoleon, and then the rat's magical dragon-slaying sword, and stated bluntly, "I'm still not on the menu, Mac."

Mac spoke to Napoleon in his mind, still trying to trick him into stabbing Zack, "I've changed my mind. I just want a hug. A nice, long hug. From ... Zack's his name? Yes! From that dragon-fellow!"

"Mac ... that's a terrible idea", Napoleon chided his sword friend, not falling for it. Instead, he offered, "Soon, we'll go catch us some Kraken."

"Kraken. Kraken. By God, yes!", Mac retorted. "Sea food! Something new. That'll do. That'll do quite nicely." The hungry sword forgot all about Zack, for the time being.

Claire chuckled, amused by Napoleon and Mac's banter, but exhaustion and hunger was settling deep into her. She spoke, and truly, reaching her hands out to begin a mystic circle, "It is time to go home."

And so the saviors of Rhy'Din returned to their world. They would go their separate ways, many of them. But always would they be bound by what they had done together, each of them sworn to silence so that the people they fought to protect would never know just how close it had all come to ending.

Vanion was dead. The Overlord's Keep was in ruins, but free from his corruption. The world was safe.

Those thoughts would give the heroes and adventurers a reprieve for a time, no matter what else was to come.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

((The Epilogue takes place a while after the Assault on Overlord's Isle, and shortly after the events surrounding Vanion's strange appearance in Iron Fists League Season Four.)

V. Epilogue

"He is not ready, Estel. He may never be ready", Valdre, the Elvish Goddess of Fire and Justice spoke, her words like ashen rain. She stood, adorned in a red robe that did not bluster or blow, despite the wind. She was beautiful and terrifying all at once, there atop the frozen peak that looked down from Haven to Elenion and Aruvian below. Beside her lingered Estel, dressed in her simple, loose white dress.

"All of our children may yet find their way again, Sister", The Elvish Goddess of Hope and Redemption countered, as she looked down into the sea of starlight below, seeing something there in the great, impossible distance. "I will not give up on him."

"Then you live up to your namesake, Estel. You are a fool", Valdre hissed, smoke sifting from her eyes like a dormant volcano ready to errupt. "I listened to you when you asked me to let him return to his world as a spirit. You said that mayhaps if he were to remember the joy he felt in the ring, as a duelist, that his violent tendencies might be curbed. You were wrong, Sister, as you so often are."

Estel weeped so gently that a mortal man may have mistaken it for a brief, lovely laugh. Without yet speaking, she raised a finger and touched one of her crystal tears. The tear clung to her fingertip for warmth, and she brought it close to her lips. "Go, and learn to love", she whispered, and her magical breath brushed the tear from her finger. It dropped into the sea of stars below, where it was caught, and began to shine with a light of its own. And so, a new star, and new worlds were born.

"Creating one world will not save another, Sister", Valdre spoke more softly, then, her anger turning to sorrow. "Rhy'Din cannot be replaced. It is the source of all magic in all worlds. It is the realm of imagination, and its Nexus lifts the Gods up so that our light may fill the hearts of our children. And, because of him, and his desire to be as We are, Rhy'Din will die. And so shall we die in the hearts of our children."

"I know", Estel answered, moved by her sister's plea. She turned to Valdre and reached out to touch her face with a caress. She knew that Valdre's fire was born of necessity, and that Valdre's will was as pure as hers. "I know, Valdre. And this is why I will not give up on him. Before he came to Elenion, he set into motion events beyond his understanding; beyond even ours. We must give him time to rehabilitate."

"No", Valdre immediately retorted, the fire gone from her voice at her sister's touch. "There is nothing in him that is good. He will never earn the right to leave Elenion. He will never know peace, and he will only know his hatred and thirst for blind revenge. There must be another that we can turn to, to save us."

Estel pulled back her hand and looked down into the Twin Oceans below. There in Aruvian, life yet thrived. Worlds and their people lived, and struggled, and knew joy and sorrow in equal measure. But there in Aruvian's shadow lingered Elenion, where the souls of the dead struggled in their own right, seeking redemption for the sins they committed in life. In Elenion, years passed in the span of a breath or heartbeat in Aruvian, and still it was all too rare that the souls bound there ever found the peace that they sought.

"There is no other who can stop Mischaelna now that she is as we are. Even we are powerless against her", Estel said, thoughtfully, as she watched one struggling soul below in particular.

Valdre closed her eyes, tightly, feeling the inevitable approach of her own Doom and the Doom of all magic in the Twin Oceans.

Estel put her hand on her sister's shoulder again, and spoke with wisdom ageless, "Rhy'Din is going to need the one they call Vanion Shadowcast. And so shall we."

And together, they looked down to where Vanion lingered below in his elvish Purgatory, living through the most wicked and painful and violent moments of his life, again and again, until the Sisters believed that his heart had earned redemption.


The End.



((This story, which took a year of live campaign-style play and collaborative writing to finish, is a prologue to the "Gunsmoke and Ashes" storyline that takes place in one possible, bleak future of Rhy'Din. A special thank you to the players of Shadow, Claire, Napoleon, Rachael and Zack, for being willing to experiment with such a crazy idea, and for helping to make something truly meaningful out of it.))