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It had been all to easy to find, Issildia thought as her hand closed over the glimmering fragment. Her eyes closing as she sensed a change in the air within the room. It was an essence that she was utterly repulsed by...one that did not belong in the realm of the living.
Silver fire flared about her cloaked form briefly in reply, the shattered remains of the Veil sparking to life momentarily as it encountered the very entity that had led to it's undoing.



"Luin..." She murmured as shadow and frost suddenly permeated the room.
A hand that seemed made of ice suddenly caught Issildia's by the throat and with unnerving ease lifted her a few inches off the ground, pinning her against the opposing wall.


His face was far different that when they had last met, there was no fear or apprehension in his grey eyes. A man who no longer had to rely upon alliances and trickery to accomplish his wishes...someone who had dared to toy with fire for their own ends.


"So...you still flee from death." He noted with a pervading calmness as Issildia opened her eyes to return his gaze, neglecting to struggle against his grip.


"...Hardly...it..would...seem" She replied as his hand tightened around her neck, her speech broken and fragmented at his efforts.

"Then perhaps I should remedy that mistake." He answered, venom now filling his words.

"..I would...be..dead..now......If you....intended such..." She said, her words hanging with effort.

A slight smirk crossed Luin's features as his hand released her and she dropped to the ground struggling for air.
"Observant as always princess." He uttered as he turned his back to her, as though inviting her to attack.

"What do you want Ryera?" She intoned with barely contained rage. Here stood the one that had killed her...who had broken the power of the Veil...seemingly here simply to gloat.



He ignored her question.
"I came to advise you..." he answered smoothly. "You and your comrades could never stand to re-forge the Veil. In a matter of weeks any remnant of it will be gone...yet you stand here with that shard...thinking that you can undo this. This world is dying...it would make your existence far easier if you simply let the next take its place. "



The sound of a blade hissing through the air filled the silence following his words, but the kunai merely imbedded itself in the opposing wall, the silver fire along its length disappearing.



Luin had disappeared in an instant , just as her rage had escaped its bounds.
It seemed that he knew them all to well.





"He knows..." Issildia said finally replying to Azure silently.



"He knows...." She breathed; opening the hand that held the crystal fragment, blood staining her palm where it's edges had cut her from the vice grip that had clutched it….

The world had changed.
For some time the banishing rays of dawn had yet to be cast down upon the earth… the Dead now roamed freely, the cities unusually silent, as though holding their breath for the next plague to descend upon them…pathetic …helpless.


Business was better than ever.


Maybe Rydek was not the metropolis it had been, bursting at the seams with traders, vagabonds, and street urchins….but even though only a scant few of the city folk ventured to the market square…there had never been such an availability of clients, Andrea though with an odd sense of glee. Perhaps this weather was dismal…but now…everyone seemed to want a sword for hire

It was a definite improvement.


“The barricades won’t stand much longer.” A male voice, jarred her from her thoughts as Andrea went back to recounting the clutter of gold coins that he had slid over to her from where he sat at the opposing end of a weather worn desk. Perhaps before Stormfall, as the common folk had started calling the day the dead had arrived, when the sky had been streaked with rain clouds that had yet to release their life-giving cargo; this man had been the city’s governing figure. But now…status was of no importance when survival was on everyone’s mind. It was a world she had only dreamed of since leaving Keirdon.


When she continued filing through the coins with little regard for his words, the man’s face creased into a frown.

“But what does a sell sword care…with gold in their hand?” His tone, fletched thin with weariness and some shred of wrath at her indifference.
“If you want me to postpone my departure and deal with the Dead…you are aware of my fee.” She said coolly while tucking the coins into a leather satchel at her hip, already catching hold of the thoughts flitting through the governor’s head.

“Our coffers are empty…we can’t give up the seed coin, we won’t survive the winter if there are no crops.” His voice almost pleading.

Her eyes flickered with amusement.

“Not my problem.” The words hanging with distaste. “And I have other clients to see to, So, if you will excuse me….”

Andrea’s turned to leave the former finances chamber, the interior licked with ash from some recent fire, pitifully begging wordlessly for some shred of mercy.


“How do you stand by while the world tears itself apart…having the skill to do something about it!?”


Her previous client questioned sharply…but the defeat evident in his tone.

Andrea paused only briefly, her back facing him still, expression flat…and voice to match.

“It is easier than you might believe.”

Then she silently exited the chamber without a second glance, two whispered words treading only just behind her exit.




“Damn you…”

(( Nice profile Fig. ))

An unnatural frost had taken hold some hours before dusk, startling the gate guards…along with whoever else was foolish enough to be outside as darkness fell still manning the barricades that blocked off the main roads into Rydek. Not that there was much left of the dilapidated structures created from the odd pieces of scrap wood and assorted rubble, but these frail barriers were all that kept the Dead out. Still this sudden chill was not normal, even in these times…could easily be the work of a necromancer’s magery to flush the towns people out of hiding.

Not that she cared.

For Andrea, the onset of night meant it was time to move on. No one traveled during the night, or else be but fodder for the Dead before the sun rose. But this was exactly the point, No one traveled at night, and she appreciated the solitude, not to mention that gift of stealth true dark provided. No doubt the Dead thought the same to the latter, but in sizable groups…they were not an issue.
After all, of late she was being paid to kill those mindless lumps of flesh…and paid well too.

The inn stables held a cool yet damp atmosphere about them, only emphasized by the early frost that had set in. Most of the stalls, if they held any occupants at all were home to weatherworn carriage horses that the inn loaned to patrons for a price. Though a few stalls from the back of the stable that was effectible squashed against the adjoining wall of the neighboring tavern, was a gray destrier fully tacked and ready for travel. The stallion was obscenely displaced among the other steeds with a heavily muscled form that marked him as a charger capable of leading the frontlines of a cavalry. Actually this was closer to the truth than Andrea would admit of her long time companion Kyugesu. He had been stolen from a larovian war camp in the Heriden Mountains set to lay siege upon Anier. The beast seemed to have little allegiance to his former masters, who to Andrea’s satisfaction had unknowingly gifted her an exquisitely trained animal; and had yet to disappoint his current owner, often traveling back and forth through the dangerous borderlands of Larovia and Keirdon.

It began just as Andrea finished tying off the newly replenished saddle bags and mounted the horse. The grating of wood and stone, and the dim shouts of people awaking from their sleep to their greatest fear filled the air…the mercenary’s highly tuned mental senses retching back as threads of panic swept though the minds of the town’s folk.
Cries transformed into screams as the west barricade fell…
The Dead had come.

Their forms were defiantly humanoid in appearance, yet all prior humanity they may have once held before death came upon them and stole their corpses was utterly vacant. Most were in a moderate state of decomposition, bones jutting rudely from gray patches of skin hanging together by spell-flesh.

Some were newly Dead, their bodies harvested fresh from the Lord Ryera's most recent attacks in the heart of southern Larovia. Their souls stripped of them to be replaced by a fragmented spirit, summoned from the deeper reaches of Death by the necromancer. Their skin still held a sandy hue to it, and their flesh was not torn and ruined like the older Dead who had already been driven into battle by their master time and time again.
These sendings of the Ryera served as the fore-front of the raids, a barrier between the enemy and the more useful of his servants.
No doubt far worse creatures waited behind the front lines beyond the devastated west barricade Perhaps Denizens of the Ninth Gate, creatures enslaved by the Ryera beyond the still waters of the final gate in the Realm of the Dead. Beings that were never meant to touch the realm of the living with their tainted flesh.

Andrea could sense only a single Greater Dead beyond the town gates, some higher servant of The Accursed, a name reserved only for the Ryera who had broken the Veil.


Her carefully attuned mind flitted about the creature for a moment, examining it carefully.
It still held a form of blood and bone she gathered...only a Denizen of the Eighth at best. Its flesh twisted by its master to resemble a heavy set four legged beast, bear-like almost. A similarly matching barbaric intelligence resting within it. A single thought permeated by a gnawing hunger drove through it's mind.
A simple creature, but a powerful adversary.


By the time Andrea thought on the matter of aiding in fending off the Dead or leaving Rydek to it's fate, the lesser dead had begun to slip through the splintered wood that signified what remained of the barricade and into the wagon marked roads that led to the center of town.


A sharp whistle marked her decision as Andrea signaled Kyugesu into a tight whip-like maneuver, turning them to face the oncoming Dead. But they did not wait idly by as the enemy advanced at a odd lumbering gate, no pause was spared as the destrier and rider moved into a pounding gallop.

The citizens of Rydek ,armed themselves with rudimentary weapons, and even bare fists were attempting to arrange themselves into some sort of force when they watched with fallen hearts as the insolent excuse for a sell-sword mounted atop a dusty gray horse disappeared over the hoard of lesser dead forcing their way through the small opening that the fallen barricade provided. Evidently they had been left to fend for themselves.


But this was only half the truth, but no one but Andrea would ever tell you otherwise.

There were fewer of them than Andrea had first perceived as Kyugesu cleared the amassment of un-dead pressed against the crumbling gateway in a single great leap. But she was not here to flee from no more than a band of thirty or less brainless lumps of meat...that aside, the invaders were not her concern. Cut of the head, defeat the body. A simple dictum, that would serve it's purpose.
Before her mount even hit the ground with his fore-legs , she had dismounted mid-air. And with slight flourish, her blade Via Dolorosa was drawn, edge gleaming like the very starlight hidden behind the dim curtain of clouds overhead....all too pleased to draw blood this night.

The Eighth Gate dweller, a being of heavy skinless flesh and insatiable hunger, did not intend to worry with these pitiful mortals. His master's charges would take care of them, of course he would be given the best spoils of the raid as reward for leading his kin to the destruction of their lord's enemies. That aside, he would not entertain such weak opponents with his presence...

Still, as powerful as the denizen believe himself to be, pain was not something he had thought to encounter.




It entered at the point where the creature's heavy set neck joined with a short bulky shoulder, pouring like hot oil into him, dark amber hued blood...his blood.... It stained the ground with a hiss of steam as the Eighth gate denizen caught a blurred image of a figure landing well within striking distance of his great taloned hands. The horrid burning pain suddenly fell away as the woman...a common fleshing it seemed, wrenched her blade from him with a spattering of amber blood. The sword's metal luminescent with a pale glow...there must have been some foul sort of banishing magic forged into the weapon to cause a Greater Dead such torment he considered briefly.

Yet this thought left the creature's dull mind as instinct took control. Clawed appendages, like a contorted cross between a bird of prey's taloned feet and the wide swiping paws of a bear, lashed outwards at this woman that had caused him so much pain. But to the beast's dismay, his attacker seemed to have vanished. Barely a moment had passed before the hulking Eighth Gate dweller roared in pain again, turning only to meet her chill silvery gray eyes for a fleeting moment before she disappeared again in a pure display of speed.
The burning anguish tore into him once again, this time slicing a searing line of blood down a back leg, effectively crippling the abomination.


Andrea watched with satisfaction at the culmination of her handiwork, the Greater Dead slumping down upon the injured limb.

At this lull in the rather one sided duel the creature finally got a good look at his tormentor.
The woman was of a light skin compared to the others of her living kin, and no color clung to her eyes, they mimicked the storm bound hues that cloaked the sky.
She was garbed in a dark leathery armor and over which wore a long ashen colored wolf pelt coat used to ward off the various elements of travel. The blade was the most striking of her possessions. It was slender in design with archaic symbols lightly etched and flowing down the length of the blade. The weapon was the most disturbing...and instrument of an Amandil. An age old order that guarded the gateways to the Realm of the Dead, not only that but unraveled the work of wayward necromancy. It seemed the woman did not know the true history behind the blade, to her it was nothing more than a tool for death and profit. A blessing for his master if she remained ignorant.

Though the Denizen did not intend for the sell-sword to survive, for he was far from being defeated.

The sound of bone gating against bone was heard as his form began to shift. Fore-legs lengthened into long sinewy arms that nearly reached to the ground, even after the back legs underwent the same transformation, lengthening to the point that the beast stood on it's hind legs with relative ease.
The torso was stretched to a narrower frame that resembled more of a humanoid form draped in knotted flesh. The once bulky head narrowed to something resembling a snout, with fangs dripping over jagged lips. The rest of the face was completely featureless, it was even devoid of eyes. But it would soon be shown, that in this new shape it had other means to view the world.
The Greater Dead towered easily three stretches over Andrea now that it had fully extended it's form.
The previous wounds remained, but the blood had clotted and begun to scar over.

Interesting... Andrea thought silently as the combat began in earnest. Her former smugness fading away now that the Dead fiend was displaying its true form.
Yet her thoughts were cut short as the denizen suddenly flickered out of existence.
It was only her adept mental senses that alerted her to it's reappearance behind her, mere moments before a talon-hand swept down upon her minuscule form from above. Evidently the transformation had more than made up for the creature's previous lack of speed, she thought wordlessly as a half-played out darting leap barely spared her from the attack.

Name: Abram Tarnen
Age: 34
Race: Valtera (Shift to horned beast, like a bull)
Gender: Male
Weapons: Not trained in or carrying any weapon faithfully, will use whatever is it at hand. Currently using a wood ax.
Secondary Weapons: n/a
Powers: Shift
Allignment: Lawful- Neutral (fallen from good)
Appearence: 6' 4" powerful, stocky figure built from demanding menial labor and a personal drive to live. Short brown hair and a scruffy beard, bags under grey-blue eyes; Garbed in mismatched greys and browns he fits the bill of a vagabond. Bruises, burns, and cuts adorn his body wherever flesh is exposed. His hands are wrapped with gauze to prevent cuts from the rusty metal he works with regularly trying to keep the defense of whatever refuge he's taken to.
Bio: Previously a member of the capital's chamber committee he pushed hard and made great strides towards the welfare of the people in the country. After the veil was broken, all social programs were cut, many principal township governments fell to brutal anarchy and Abram found himself fighting tooth and nail in the slums to survive on the outskirts of civilization. The dead mist has started to take a hold of those outside the guarded towns, those close to the undead. It slowly kills the victim, makes them go insane. Once fighting for the good of the downtrodden, he now finds himself more and more fighting against them for scarce resources, and their own crippling madness. But perhaps one day he will succumb too. And he will find no pity.

A frosty gaze fell upon the Denizen as Andrea’s languid movements averted to something far more lethal…reflexes sharpened to the agility of a serpent, and her previously dim gray eyes seemed almost ethereal upon their tone fading to a silvery white. Though there was no true change, her facial features had transformed from that of idle amusement to a cruel wolf-like façade.

Body, taught like a bow string, there was a heady moment just before the scene unfolded, a moment that Andrea took to communicate all she would spare for this fiend against nature. Though she held no love for others of this realm, whether her kin or otherwise…the Dead had no place here.
If it was her misfortune to usher them back to their master, so be it.
At sudden sound of flames exploding in the background, and the abrupt rush of heat from the alcohol fed inferno, she began.

The Greater Dead did not expect his quarry to ignore the distance between their two figures as the fair skinned mercenary unexpectedly vanished in a sharp hiss of air and rippling darkness. Her newly acquired location did not remain a mystery for long as the beast felt a subtle brush of air above his position…this was the only warning the Dead received before the sensation of molten silver lanced deep into deformed flesh ripping his newly wrought form asunder with a fiery torment.