He knew this hill. It was just south of Trone, close to the water, and riddled with wild wheat that no one bothered to harvest. He recalled lying here, on his back, looking up at the stars and imagining an adventure at each one. A beautiful girl awaited him there, and swords, and derring-do. He would snatch a kiss and doff his cap, and he would be the king of those distant places. He would roam however he saw fit. His people would love him, for he would be just. A child's fancy was never captured so perfectly as it was in his own mind. That he could no longer picture an adult self having adventures such as those spoke more to his mood than his general state of childish wonder. He'd been stabbed by a lady with whom he believed he'd fallen in love. Now that love, much like these childish fantasies he only just recalled, seemed to be fading away. His adult self was cradling someone else when he checked. It was a vicious sort of thing. Not one that Skandra imagined ever felt good. To see all of your protective fantasies, all the small things that guarded your fragile heart, evaporating before your eyes.

( Things made even less sense than they used to. )

He noticed almost immediately that the air felt strange around him. No. It did not feel strange. It smelled strange. Ilúvatar knew it well. It had begun, this familiarity, in the days of his father. When you were the sword of your house you were meant to know the stench of battle. Smoke and death were recognizable to you because it was your purpose and intent to cause them, in as much volume as you could, thus laying great waste to the enemies of your house. Here he was, now, the last male of his family. If he'd perished in battle yesterday the house would have gone with him. He was not one to think often on family honor - unless it were one of the more obvious obligations, such as caring for his mother, he found he had little use for them. Yet that thought lingered as he stared into the mirror.

( The last of a kind. )

All wrought iron and vicious corners, these gates. Yet the massive wheel-and-pulley systems on either side began to hiss. Chain was wrapping around itself with dull metallic clanks. The gate began to rise. It was one of a hundred such gates spread throughout the city. The great wall of Terestai was in reality two walls - one outer, one inner - with about thirty yards of space between outer and inner. That space was occupied by murder holes, fox holes, arrow slits and heavy entrenchments from which a wall-saving stand could be made. Oil was boiling up above, distracting the mages with its scent of death and fear - oil and tar that had been pulled from the burning wood to the south. Those fox holes between the two walls were occupied by four pikemen each, but could hold up to fifteen. Ilúvatar could see eyes and helmets floating through the arrow slits. Elves stood ready behind the inner wall, waiting to fire on anyone who breached the defenses from the safety of stone.

( Baila had done a fine job of preparing this city for battle. )

Maeglin's residence was a boiling sea of madness. Elves in heavy armor and pikes were scrambling into ten-deep formations before hustling off to points unknown. Well, in fariness, he knew. Baila had given him a detailed report of the arrangements for the defense. Ilúvatar was certain that he'd been listening intently. Their colors were strange bedfellows, indeed. Some of Maeglin's soldiers and some of Guyther's soldiers and some of Ilúvatar's own Thunderbolts. Their ranks were swelling every day. If you were able-bodied and had a mind to defend Terestai, you were enlisting in the Thunderbolts and taking your lumps among all of the other fresh recruits. Baila had established quite a system for funneling and testing recruits, so that by the time Ilúvatar was aware of them, their participation was almost certain. Truly irreplaceable, that Captain of his, and he would never be able to Baila so until one of them was certainly going to die.

( It would be a long wait, he hoped. )

Elemmire sashayed on out of the room and took half the wine with her. Good for her: everyone deserves to tie one on now and again. In fact Leir was half in the bag when he decided to follow through on what had earlier been simply an idea of whimsy. Maybe whimsy isn’t the proper word because, after he smoothed out a piece of expensive tan paper, he was not laughing or smiling or doing much else other than reaching for a pen.

He sharpened it quickly with a desk knife. ( Flick flick flick. )

Leir didn’t like being in other people’s homes. Not as a guest anyway. He’d climbed into plenty of windows in the middle of the night when he was called Flaithri but that was just to spend time with girls. That almost always ended with an angry father or a shouting butler; either way was much more fun than simply being someone’s welcome guest.

Nothing in the room was his. Nothing on the grounds was his. This removed any opportunity to feel free or excited. If he owned the house he was sitting in he’d be finding out how far up the walls he could scale, which balcony he could fall from and still land on his feet, and which table was best for bending a woman over.

But the house was Maeglin’s. So he was sitting alone in a room, orange and white hair dripping from the bath, bouncing a small handball off the floor to the wall and then right back into his palm. Mindlessly, waiting for something to happen. At any moment the ball might turn into a bird and fly right out the cracked window in a show of the universe’s improbability.

His sword was hanging from the back of a chair up against the wall. Above it was a framed painting of three horsemen and their dogs on a fox hunt. Leir always liked the fox better than the hunters and decided that this particular painting showed the three men in utter failure; they’d never find the fox and it would go on forever being the cunning master of its forest.

They were about to be in a civil war.

Iluvatar would make the right decisions. Which meant Leir would ride at his side or stand down all the same; whatever the sylvan required. Leir caught the ball again and squeezed it, watching the seams threatening to burst under his grip. He’d already dispatched a messenger to the temple historians. They had his uniform, his medals, the armor that had been crafted and measured especially for him years ago. At one point they’d been publicly shown and only taken out of the temple shrines when needed. Now? Since all the betrayal? Probably hidden away in a store room. And he’d sent a chamber man off to find Elemmire. So when there was a rap at the door he knew it was one or the other; either his belongings coming to find him again, or the ethereal woman come to speak with him.

“Come in,” he said in an almost songlike timbre.

He glanced over at the door as it cracked. Elemmire. The door swung open fully and allowed a gentle cross breeze to pull in from the windows.

“Hello,” he greeted her. There was a half empty bottle of wine on the floor next to his chair. “Want to get drunk?”

Whisking themselves away in the dead of night actually developed into something of the easy part of this mad little plan of theirs. The riot was only just beginning to take shape as they'd fled, hustling across dark stone and shadowed corners to reach the place where the wagons were loaded and unloaded. A port on dry land, Skandra had called it, and that had mostly been right. Plum sheets and curtains disguised the back of the high-walled cart. enough to shield the fact that only four bottles had been arranged there. It was the perfect amount of space for two Elves and an Immortal that were simply desperate to be away from there, and didn't want to be seen on the road back to Terestai. There were going to be patrols, or Skandra was going to become a zealot of Lorien. Guarantees didn't need to be that colorful, but the more confident you were, the more likely you were to offend someone's sensibilities.

( And he was fairly confident. )

The first thing you realized when you were stuffed into armor and coat was that soldiering was a miserable profession. Skandra couldn't remember the last time he'd worn armor like this. Of course, the good news was that he wasn't actually a soldier. The bad news was that pretending to be one was probably a lot fucking harder than actually being one. Yorilan's nephew was no fucking help. The entire time they were chaning, in the locker that Ervu - what a name for an elf - swore was never used, Ervu kept peeking out the narrowest slit in the door to see if someone was coming. Skandra half-wanted to kick one of the metal boxes just to make the kid jump. You didn't get anywhere by refusing to play it cool, but then again, they'd all be fucking stuck here if this thing went sour. Skandra didn't want to be stuck here. And Ervu didn't seem to have any gods-damned idea where Ilúvatar was being held.

( This kid was almost useless. )

Skandra had to wonder how he'd do, himself, in a city that saw sunlight as often as it saw rain - in both cases, never. The last time he'd been here, he'd been looking for a good time and nearly gotten through into the Red Vault for his trouble. Of course, that was the story with Skandra Tyullis wherever he went. Good times. Bad times. Near-imprisonment. Eventual escape and victory. Standing as he was now in one of the crowded lifts - at last relieved of his burden the stone - Skandra wondered what all of these short and troublesome elves would think if they knew this place housed one of the greatest fighters to ever walk their country with his head held high. Probably they'd all shit themselves, lean against these dusty wood-and-metal walls, and beg for deliverance. They typically did not know how deliverance arrived.

( On the tip of the spear. )

When someone said 'map room', Skandra usually expected the thing to be full of maps. They were there - endless wooden tubes capped in bronze, which could be unscrewed to reveal the carefully waxed map inside. Yet there was only one map on display. A stretch of leather had been carefully inked with the whole of Astarii's borders visible to anyone that looked. Skandra's fingers were tracing this name, that name, all of it in the tongue of the High elves. Yet always his fingers found their way back to Ra Arato Sapsa. Always he was left with more questions than answers. It was just a name on a map. It couldn't tell him anything that he didn't already know. And if this, what he despised, was any indication... then his life was not about to become less complicated. It was about to become more complicated. And the most he could hope for in all of this madness was a little bit of luck and a lot of good will. Ramga had to be the one, didn't he? Only what To had explained didn't make any sense.

( There was very little that made any sense. )

He'd read the map with a wicked hangover and a pair of bleary eyes, gloves scraping water away from the waxed parchment as best he could. Riding in the rain was miserable. Riding in the rain with a pair of women and a fellow who thought they were constantly being stalked by lions was worse. Leironuoth called it "sneaking up on my horse" but what usually happened was that all of the animals were spurred into a mad gallop. At least he hadn't done it since the border. Though he'd yet to stop laughing about it. The storm was sweeping west to east, so that they were constantly mired in it, ever since they'd gone out of Agethlea. There was nothing to do but button up his coat and live with it. Reading a map with only a clove and a set of narrowed eyes was hard enough.

( He'd had too much whiskey, probably. )

Night in any city was a time of renewal and rebirth.

If you traced the cycle of hours from dawn to dusk, you would see the rise and fall of civilization. In the morning the honest folk rose from their beds. A touch of milk and water, perhaps some bread, and they were on their way. Honey if you were a rich asshole. You proceeded with an honest day's work, you collected the wages produced by said honest work, and by dusk you were home. There was a loving family awaiting you there. A wife. Children. Perhaps an uncle or aunt that you were gracious enough to allow to live with you. Dinner was a shared and familial experience. Then you prepared for the next day. You let your self shine through all of the small trials you endured during the day.

( Skandra could never imagine living that way. )

It was always a surprise when she laid her hands on Leir. A shock to the senses, she felt like she could have told him everything and he would have understood, she felt as if her lives had always revolved around his, but that wasn't true. Those were memories that were not her own and never would be her own. She knew Leir only in the smallest of ways and she could not understand him, nor would he understand her. The next thought was always that he looked too much like his father and it caused a deep sadness to well up inside of her. How many times had she almost whispered his name? Eibhear was gone, he was not coming back. Leir was not his father, and in her mind he could never be better than Eibhear.. Just different from him. Great in his own way but not in her heart. She was different from Leir. They were not friends. Simply companions of fate and destiny.. She would not tell him that though.

( He simply would not understand. )

For a moment, he didn't think such a thing was possible.

In the aftermath of... whatever the hell it was that had happened here, this section of the city remained deserted. Early one morning he'd heard shouting, and the rattle of armor, but it turned out to have not a thing to do with Skandra Tyullis or the ones who were with him. Which was a lucky thing, considering that Elemmire slept more often than she awoke - and that was usually just to treat herself to a gulp of water. They were not running out of time. They had already run out. Tomorrow was the day. Skandra had not quite framed it in these terms for the stalwart companions that were tolerating his bossy, churlish ways - but tomorrow either Elemmire was going to die, or they were. All other options had been eliminated by now. He couldn't imagine what sort of things were happening in her mind. Or what sorts of images she was seeing in the darkness of her eyelids.

( Probably better if he didn't. )

At first there'd been no talking. Only a bit of sleep for souls that were exhausted, despite the restorative effects of ... what he'd done. Skandra couldn't imagine sleeping after something like that, but his mind settled easily into the rhythm of rest. Hat brim pulled over his eyes, mouth slightly open, the Immortal had begun snoring in earnest. Of course no one complained that he was keeping them awake. That he remembered. If they had, their words were lost in that oblivion reserved for those who were doing something vastly more important than conversing with shrews who complained about snoring - namely, sleeping. But the sleep he found was not the sleep he wanted. Or even the sleep that he needed. Instead his throat was dry, but he took a drink, and the water plunged him into a sea of madness as before. Time that had no meaning. Voices he did not know, arguing about something he did not understand. The visions he saw along with those voices were half-formed and strange. A great hand, the size of a building, covered in runes and symbols of ancient times long forgotten. The hand made a fist. The voice belonged to it. And Skandra drew his sword at its coming.

( It made no sense. )

For a moment Skandra did not realize he was seeing the world in white outlines and black star-drinking shapes. Not until a void that was shaped like a former compatriot was whispering about exhaustion to him. Not until his eyes were drifting skyward, and he was scratching a day's worth of stubble with a bloody wounded hand. You bet everything, and if you lost, you doubled up to make back your losses. That was how it was supposed to work. In reality sooner or later you would lose it all - because nobody had an infinite bankroll. He was starting to feel some of that loss now, starting to wonder if it would be worth it to keep going. Another bet, twice what he'd lost, might save the day. Might ruin him. There wasn't enough time to search for answers. From the corner of his eyes he saw two white shapes clinging to each other, filled with the void, light-less and bland as they shouted incoherently. One staggering step forward. Two. Heat was in his boots, on his legs, but he could not make himself pay attention to the heat just yet. There would come a time. The time was not now. Not yet.

( They still had so far to go. )

Skandra was beginning to regret some things.

Onainat, who'd insisted that she was the perfect person to drive their wagon, was going entirely too fast. She seemed possessed of a madcap glee that he'd not seen in her in quite some time. Skandra didn't like telling people they were insane but he was starting to think they needed to have a conversation. Hanging onto the side rail for all that he was worth, and picturing his death beneath an overturning carriage and ten tons of horseflesh, was more than he was capable of just then. Instead his eyes snapped back, over his shoulder, to the distant rumble he heard from the rear. Whatever it was, it was probably unrelated to them. Probably someone causing another, wholly unrelated ruckus in the city? He never paid attention, but he thought they might have been demolishing one of the old court buildings today. The skyline looked different. He kept looking back until he thought it would make him sick, and then he turned his eyes to the front once more. Onainat was urging people to get out of the way by shouting haphazardly at them. And he was starting to suspect that she'd never done this before.

( Then again, neither had he, if... )

"You're a legend in your own mind," the fellow sneered.

"Then you shouldn't have a problem calling it," Skandra answered his sneer with a more powerful edition.

The brown-coat's face lifted. "Heads."

At the first ring of silver on stone, Skandra lifted the crossbow he was clutching like driftwood at sea and shot his opponent in the stomach. With a single high-pitched squeal the man's soul picked up its feet and fled into the afterlife.

"Well that was womanish," Skandra informed him.

( Somehow they'd stumbled into chaos. )

It stank.

Of fear, anxiety and perspiration mixed with other musty smell of wet hay in the still air.

The White Riders had thrown the entire group that they had gathered at the auction into a single windowless grey holding cell with nothing but concrete walls and metal bars for company. Displaced of their usual setting, the group first milled about, expressing their outrage at the top of their lungs until they realized that there was no one around to hear their protests. The weaker ones found themselves crouching near the floor, overwhelmed by their own anxieties and exhaustion to do anything but weep while the stronger sought to break free – to varying effects. From her corner, she watched as the mages tried to throw their magic at the metal bars to no effects. Basic incantations that invoke the various elements of fire, air, earth and water went unanswered as though they were all caught in a space where no gods or power could reach them. She watched as their faces crumble with despair as they stared at the empty space between their hands expectantly while the more desperate ones threw themselves against the bars, trying to pry the metal rods apart with their bare hands to no avail. The despair of knowing all that you have is not enough Something that she knew too well.

( He will come. )