Hand of the Reckoners

By Dana Crotts

Euphos Lones Trag must find a way to defeat the forces destroying his home. From a wayward cult that teaches that all history has been a mistake to a stitched horror of a man, Euphos will encounter a multitude of evil beings who are bent on imposing a new order upon his country. An order that claims to be one of liberation, but is nothing of the sort.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dana Crotts
• Release date: May 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781513634289

Book preview

Prologue

I am a small creature. Very, very, very, very small. Smaller than the parchment that I write this on.

I live in the House of the Gods of the Higher Order, which is where all of the gods reside except for Magno. He is the god of killing, deception, and reckless waste. He owns an entire domain, and I think he has a few buddies down there. I’m not sure, though.

My home is on the floor, in the cracks at the bottom of the wall where the trim is. The floors are marble. I know this and everything else I know from walking around listening to the gods and other people up here. There are all sorts of people here—I guess they are spirits, technically, but they look like people, and they’re very big compared to me.

I was the subject of magical experiments in my life. A caster had been practicing a shrinking spell on things and the bastard picked me. He had me in a cage probably just for that reason. Anyways he shrank me and then I fell through the cage mesh. The idiot didn’t even think about getting a cage with small holes in it so that the target of his shrink spell wouldn’t fall through.

I’m writing this note because I want people to know that the gods sometimes have emotions, or something like emotions. They get angry, sad, and happy.

The gods watch the whole universe, or just everything there is, as I like to say, from the House of the Gods of the Higher Order. They made all of the stuff in the universe—the planets, the stars, the space, the magic, the beings. This stuff is very complicated and it hurts my brain to think about it. Magno watches the universe too, but he mostly just wants to wreck everything, and he may be the force behind the chaos on a planet called Repath Aos Vio.

The gods are angry with the beings on Repath Aos Vio. The people on this planet named it after a god, so you’d think they’d be smart and not anger the gods. But the gods are very angry with them.

The people on this planet are living like beings with significantly lower intelligence than they actually have. They are smart people living like dumb people. This is why the gods are angry, because these people are willfully acting like the lower forms of life.

Anyway, for your information, I died when I was eaten by another creature that was usually a lot smaller than I was, until I got shrunk. I had to die to escape that bastard’s lab, but I came here so I must have done something right. I miss my friends back on my planet, but I believe I will see them again when they die and come here.

There is an astral dimension that you go to when you die. Your spirit pops out of your body and then goes to this weird place that looks like it’s always night. It’s like a dock where a bunch of sailors are waiting to take people to wherever they want to go. You get to pick where to go. You can go to the domains of powerful, strange entities, or to the gods’ house, but you may not be allowed to get in to your destination. I’m lucky the gods let me in here.

There are all sorts of spirits flying around the astral dimension and it looks very beautiful except for all the malevolent spirits wandering the Graveyards and Crypts. All sorts of spirits like to stay in that place and never go to other places like the place I’m in now.

The gods expected me when I died too. They knew I was going to die. The gods know everything. They know I’m writing this on a piece of parchment that is bigger than I am. I found it on the floor, must have been a particle from somewhere. I’m using some mushy stuff to write with. I don’t know what it is.

The gods also know that I hear them, and that I am going to put these words inside their heralds’ scrolls to be delivered to the different worlds. The heralds deliver messages to certain beings on certain planets. Mostly to beings who would be considered righteous and powerful on their own worlds.

If you somehow get ahold of this message I am writing, first let me just say hello! After that you need to listen carefully.

The gods do not like to have to warn beings when the beings are not doing good. The gods believe the beings should know better. Neither do they make a fuss when they decide to do something about the behavior.

Do not anger them.

Repath Aos Vio is in dire trouble.

Chapter 1

Euphos Lones Trag, hunter of undead and beasts, sat on a sturdy chair looking out a window high above his swamp. His stilt house was built high, mostly to make it difficult for would-be hunters. Hunters looking for him.

He was the enemy of many different beings, mostly beasts and undead and the conspirators who would use these beasts and undead as pawns in their schemes. No doubt there were many bounties on his head.

The beasts in the swamp, such as the vicious, prehistoric looking geizr, functioned like moat beasts, protecting Euphos’s stilt house keep from intruders. Euphos traveled the waters in a pirogue, careful to keep himself out of the water at all times.

He caught a glimpse of something moving on the land some hundreds of feet from his home. It was that time of the day when beasts hunted prey. The roaming cowgimmes, flightless birds, would be prey to the muscled predators.

Euphos shielded his eyes from the large sun and its two brother suns to get a better look. The world of Repath Aos Vio was lit mainly by a single star; however, two other stars sat in the sky behind the star, one of these a tiny orb barely larger than the planet itself. The other was much farther away, but larger.

The small near star was believed to be a creation of the researchers of a society of engineers and alchemists, and not a creation of the gods. The gnomes of Xipigong denied having anything to do with the small fiery orb, but historical records said otherwise. In any event the star glowed in blues, light blue to a deep dusk blue, and theory had it that the star was put in place in an attempt to control the natural cycling of the Spell Ages.

Euphos leapt out of his window and onto the deck that encircled his stilt house. Then he turned on the ladder and jumped down into his pirogue, catching a few rungs to slow his descent. He landed on the seat and in one motion immediately starting rowing to get a jump on his catch. Or rather Tric’s catch.

The swamp waters reeked of sulfur and detritus, signs that the waters had not been disturbed in some time. Upon reflection the hunter couldn’t remember the last time he had been on the water. He couldn’t remember much about the previous day, or when he last saw Tric. Something like a blank spot in his mind.

He tried to row as quietly and quickly as possible. His pirogue pushed across the water, carving a path through the thick baelweed that floated on the surface. The baelweed peeled apart like a scab that held back blood from trickling onto flesh.

Euphos reached land and hauled his pirogue onto the flats for a fast getaway, then drew his recurve bow, nocking an arrow. He stepped onto the large peat-moss island where he had seen the movement moments before. The clicking of many types of rittits bounced around the wetlands, but Euphos’s ears had adjusted to the chatter and he was able to isolate a whimpering sound coming from a dense peat-bog area of the dark land.

Whimpering sounds—never trust the first instinct. The hunter had learned to question his gut reaction over the years. When all your senses tell you that you’ve injured your quarry and it’s time for the death blow, control your impulse: your quarry may know it’s being followed. That means it knows to set a trap.

Shadows fell over the tall ellur trees. Their thin branches drew a thousand slivers of black onto the boggy floor and onto the violent lurking predators, like an approaching hail of arrows.

Repath Aos Vio, the forsaken lands of the god of sorrow, was so named because of its eternally overcast skies and its dangerous geography. The land was haunted with denizens of the night like wraiths, spectres, liches, demons, and beasts with black coats and darker urges. Repath Aos Vio had hosted a thousand death cults and necromancer covens over the ages. Aos, the god of sorrow, seemed to have constructed the world from his own bleak essence, like a spirit-broken painter spilling tragedy onto a canvas.

Euphos’s home stood in the swamp lands of Phasebios, an island state that was home to Spektros, the capital city of the Spectral Empire. Spektros was located in the southern reaches of the state. The people from Phasebios were known as Biotians, and the Spectral Empire stretched across the continent of Phracia and beyond.

The Spectrul Sea circled the island state of Phasebios and separated it from mainland Phracia. In all, fourteen states made up Euphos’s home country of Phracia, Phasebios being one of them. Phracia was a federation with democratically elected state governments all possessing specific independent powers, but all unified under the central power Spektros.

Phracia contained powerful states like Praycium, the home of the largest and busiest port on the continent, and Trobia, home of the most powerful temples and cults on the continent. It had a rich history, complete with its own heroes and mythology, and possessed one overriding, one unifying characteristic: darkness. Its perpetually overcast skies darkened its environments and its teeming populations of undead darkened its spirit. The people of Phracia and their culture had been built around conflicts with the haunting spirits of their home, with many finding strange ways to survive in the shadowy hunting grounds of the shambling horrors that infested every region, having to strike terrible bargains with evil to survive. Rumors had come about that even Spektros’s powerful federal forces contained the proceeds of infernal pacts with devils and other damned entities that haunted the country alongside the other horrors.

The hunter slunk through the trees looking for Tric, his Tracker. Where are you? Euphos called out.

Immediately, a burst of energy, a being made of magic spell tracings and imbibed with the spirit of life, appeared some yards away from the hunter. He hummed with delight upon seeing his friend.

Tric made his way toward Euphos, floating several feet off the ground like an insect made of light. Given to Euphos by a tribe of shamans from the wildlands of Stum Igbo, the land of the ogres, Tric was the hunter’s Tracker.

Did you find out what that sound was?

Tric spun around Euphos and then shot ahead and waited, indicating to the hunter to follow. Euphos trailed Tric toward the peat bog, careful to keep his senses attuned to the swamp even though he could and did trust Tric with his life.

The hunter found a boy lying unconscious in the peat bog. He was pale and his skin lined with blue veins. Euphos bent down to inspect. The boy’s eyes were rolled back into his head and his mouth was dry and cracked. The boy was obviously suffering from cipsa, an infection that was only transmittable through sexual contact.

Euphos grabbed him and lifted him out of the peat bog. His skin was hot to the touch and he didn’t come to when Euphos picked him up.

I need you to light the way while we take him back, Euphos told Tric. The sun is setting.

Tric zipped to the lead and lit the descending gloom while the hunter carried the boy as quickly as he could back to the pirogue. A grinding growl, deep like a raging waterfall, bounded through the trees. Euphos recognized the threatening call as coming from a roemanx, a large nocturnal hunter with a velvety pelt and ghostly eyes. He would not want to face the roemanx with his hands full.

Tric’s humming grew louder and his fluorescence pulsed like a flame fed by bellows when he heard the growl. The Tracker understood the danger they would be in as soon as the sun set.

Euphos picked up his pace. The peat was thick and the extra weight of the boy was causing him to sink too deep to walk comfortably.

When they reached the water flats where the pirogue sat, Tric circled around the boat to make sure no—

A geizr leapt out of the water, seeking to sink its diamond-hard incisors into the Tracker. Tric flitted to the side and above the boat to avoid getting swallowed by the raging killer.

Euphos set the boy down and drew his bow. The geizr was climbing up the side of the pirogue to catch Tric in its jaws and its bulk almost flipped the boat over.

Euphos carefully aimed his shot, then loosed an arrow that pierced the back of the geizr’s scaled neck. The shot stunned it, but the beast quickly regained its bearings and lunged toward the shore. Geizrs were semi-intelligent and could detect sources of danger to some degree.

Euphos knew he would have to hit the beast in the head to incapacitate it. A second shot hit the creature in the face, slightly missing its brain matter, and now the beast looked like it had two wooden ears sticking up from its head.

The hunter drew a long sword from a scabbard on his back and stood in front of the approaching beast. Its maw opened wide with a roar that numbed Euphos’s eardrums. It launched itself at the hunter, but at the last second pivoted to clamp down on the boy’s foot. The geizr dragged the boy like a human shield in front of Euphos.

Tric floated up to the geizr and shocked the creature’s tail while it was focused on Euphos. The Tracker’s shocks weren’t powerful enough to be considered a weapon, but they distracted the beast enough for Euphos to slip in an attack. And at just the right time.

A rumbling snarl rolled in from behind the hunter, almost distracting him from his opportunity. Euphos leapt and flipped his sword, punching it into the neck of the geizr. The beast dropped the boy from its grasp and then wiggled violently, trying to free itself from the impaling.

Euphos grabbed the boy and shot a glance back and saw two roemanxes approaching, their muscular forms moving quickly and silently, and so low they almost slid along the ground. He’d have to leave his sword. It was keeping the geizr pinned into the swamp.

The hunter rushed to toss the boy into the boat as he dove right after, careful to not crush the boy with his weight. They hit hard and the boat bounced in the water but did not sink. Euphos felt the top of his wrist spike poke into his body as he landed on his forearms, reassuring the hunter that he could defend himself in close combat if the roemanxes pursued.

By the time Euphos righted himself he heard the beasts on the shore thrashing and clawing at each other. The roemanxes surrounded the geizr, and then one leapt on its back. The geizr had been able to pull the sword from the ground and meet its attacker, but the powerful claws of a roemanx were hooking into the wounded beast, snapping its bones as they dug toward its heart. The roemanxes sunk their teeth into the geizr’s throat on both sides and the beast was ripped in two.

The silky night-black pelts of the roemanxes were covered in gore from the battle. Euphos could see their ghostly forms outlined by the bright white fluorescence of the geizr’s blood. As the sun set on the horizon, its light already shrouded by the cloud cover, darkness took the land and the hunter rowed himself and the boy back to his stilt house.

- * -

Although the skirmish had not been long, it exhausted Euphos, who had already spent the entire day checking traps he had set in various locations around the swamp. He had gathered enough meat to sustain him and his . . .

Euphos’s mind went blank. What was I thinking about?

The bouts of blankness. The spells of forgetfulness. He was forgetting something, something very important.

The hunter sat in a chair at the only table inside his hovel. The sun had risen hours earlier and he had awakened to find the boy still unconscious. He bandaged up the boy’s leg, using an ointment made from swamp plants to help heal the wounds inflicted by the geizr.

Sitting at his table he stared at a map of Phasebios, a map he had used for years to travel around the island state. A memory seemed to be just out of reach, seemed to slip its foot into the doorway of his mind, only to then turn around and disappear like a spectre. Was it something on the map? Some location? Some piece of information about a job or a landmark?

The island state of Phasebios had a remarkable history. The god of civilization, Bas, had dictated the Keys to Empire to the founders of the Biotian civilization centuries before. The Keys were principles required for the Frissians, people from the continent of Phracia, to avoid large-scale wars in their attempt to bring law and order to the continent.

The resulting governing institutions required by the Keys helped to bring order to the wildlands of the continent and prevented untold deaths, wars, and revolutions. However, some—the followers of Ides, the god of free will—believed there were better ways to bring about law and order.

Euphos was ready to take another job. He had hunted monsters, often undead, his whole professional life. His family had been killed during an undead raid on their village. He was almost killed himself, and the scars behind his hairline ran all the way to his neck.

When a cough came from the bedroll in the corner of his hovel, Euphos stood to inspect and found the boy coming to. His skin burned hot and Euphos put a wet blanket over his body to cool him down. The cipsa disease caused burning fevers and spells of confusion, and victims of the disease often had to be restrained to prevent them from wandering away from their homes. The boy probably had wandered to the swamp from a small village some distance away.

The boy let out a long groan, and Euphos sat next to him on a chair and lifted his head to get him to drink water. The boy’s hands instinctively reached for the cup and he gulped down the contents while his eyes were still closed.

Tric moved close to the boy. The light from his hovering body and the warm humming seemed to calm him, and moments later he opened his eyes.

His irises were yellow, another symptom of the disease. Euphos guessed that he had been infected relatively recently because his veins had not become entirely visible. People who had carried the disease for long periods looked as if maps of the world had been drawn onto their bodies.

I am Euphos. Can you tell me your name?

The boy slowly turned his head and looked up at the hunter. He was no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, relatively young to have already contracted the disease. Euphos had seen entire towns turn into infirmaries because of cipsa infections. Prostitutes unaware of being infected or not displaying symptoms probably enabled the disease to take hold. It wasn’t long before the pestilence made its way into the homes of the aristocrats and townspeople. Something had happened to the very nature of the cities. Something was destroying the people’s senses.

Taverns and whorehouses once confined to the seedier sections of towns had multiplied outward until the residential areas of cities became indistinguishable from the centers of ill repute. The trend was everywhere and the relationship between man and woman seemed to be breaking apart, reduced to merely the physical component. Marriage was fading from existence and with it the stabilizing effects it had upon Phracia.

I am Tiskus. The boy’s head was red hot. Euphos draped a wet rag over his forehead. Tiskus turned his attention to Tric. That looks like a tracing. But it’s floating around.

You’re right. Tric is a tracing.

Can he talk?

No. He communicates by—

Tric grew very bright and bounced up and down in the air. His humming got louder.

Well, he communicates by doing stuff like that.

Tiskus stared intensely at Euphos’s Tracker. Fascinating.

Euphos had received Tric as a reward for completing a quest. He had been contracted by an ogre shaman to catch a spirit that had been torturing his tribe with nightly possessions. The possessed ogres slaughtered others within the tribe, and the entire village was wracked with terror. Euphos demanded a high fee for the job. The lands of the ogres were wild, and anyone, especially a human, risked life and limb even setting foot inside them.

Tric was a gift beyond the gold talins he was paid for capturing the spirit. An ogre caster cast a spell, tracing the spell’s symbol in the air. The tracing, like all magic tracings, contained the power of a specific spell, a spell powered by arcane magic. The spell could be used when its owner demanded. Instead of storing the tracing for later use, the ogre handed it to a shaman who then imbued the magic tracing with the spirits of the wild. Tric was born, an entity of magic energy, possessing a consciousness granted by the shaman’s nature spirit magic.

The ogre shaman suggested that Euphos was himself a mystical energy rather than flesh and blood. He was a force or an energy capable of incredible acts and not as much a mortal being. And so Tric, the being made of pure magic and given life artificially, embodied the essence of the hunter.

Can I get one of those? the boy asked.

First you need to tell me how you ended up in the swamp and then where you’re from. We need to get you back to your home.

The blood flushed into Tiskus’s cheeks. If my mom finds out about me I’m a goner.

Exactly what do you mean?

Tiskus could not bear to tell the hunter.

You have a serious infection, the man said, and the only hope you have is finding a cleric who believes you worthy of healing. Cipsa was not fatal, but it required divine magic.

Do you know any?

I do, but they will want a steep fee for performing the healing.

Nice. My mom is very rich, the boy said, about as rich as a vagrant who sleeps on a pile of hay.

Where is she?

Tiskus told Euphos they lived in the village not far from the swamp. His mother was a beggar who was able to get some work spinning cloth. He had never known his father, a situation that was more the rule than the exception now. Marriage was losing its meaning.

Euphos’s connections in Spektros had reported that its incoming governors, the assemblymen and the like, were foregoing wives entirely and simply finding momentary partners in the taverns and alleyways. The entire family lineage structure that had held so much weight in political dealings had now almost become a legend. None of the original Biotian surnames of the founders of the Spectral Assembly nor their political descendents could be found. In fact, many in the assembly had no surnames at all.

The farmers on the outskirts of the cities had resisted the degradation; however, as time wore on and each generation forgot the values of its parents, even they found their families breaking apart. Euphos had traveled the continent of Phracia many times during his life and had seen the trend across the land. He often wondered why he was so sensitive to it. When he looked at Tiskus he remembered.

I’ll let you stay one day. Tomorrow we take you home.

Tiskus was happy. He felt a security around Euphos. Something that he had never felt before. And what about you? he asked. You have a wife?

Euphos’s body shook, as if with a small seizure. The boy’s question cut into him like a colossus blade.

The hunter dropped to his knees, forced to hold his consciousness together like a shattered vase. He stared at the ground as the whole world spun around him.

Tiskus watched Euphos collapse like dirty clothes into a hamper. He was too weak from his fever to offer any help, still drowsy.

Moments passed before Euphos could put together any rational thought. Memories of a woman, dark hair, long, swirled around his mind.

Pressia.

This was that memory, that nagging thought that concealed itself so well in his mind, like an assassin perched atop a tree, waiting for quarry to pass underneath.

Pressia, yes, she is my wife. She should be back soon . . .

Just as he finished his statement, his mind blanked again. All the revelations that had overtaken him for a moment disappeared, and he found himself still kneeling next to Tiskus, holding a wet rag in his hand and wondering what the blank spot in his mind was. A thought just out of reach wanted to show itself, but somehow the hunter could not let it through . . .

A man in a dirty brown cloak stood at one corner of the town square. He proselytized in Lectidomes, the capital of the state of Thephobium, in the western part of Phracia. This state was home to the Council for Frissian States, a body of representatives from across the continent. The council held little control over the Spectral Empire, mostly serving as an assembly for the states to express their expected good will. It was a body not specified in Bas’s Keys to Empire. This capital city held both its own local government and that larger council. Lectidomes was a center of government, diplomacy, and much business now taking place in the town square.

Hello, my brothers and sisters, cried the man in brown. Please listen to my words! We are at a crossroads in time! It is time to throw off the evils that we have been burdened with for centuries! Free yourselves from the oppressions of the past!

The crowds did not heed him as they pushed into one another and searched the town square for goods. Being too busy with daily life, the people did not notice the growing presence of the Cult of Revolution in their city, and dismissed the cult if they did notice. But the cult would not be ignored. They were infiltrating all manner of professions and would use every outlet possible to disrupt the Frissians, including traveling bands of bards and other performance arts. A stage on one side of the square, opposite the proselytizer, hosted the cult’s play.

Hello, my good man, said one of the actors to another on the stage. Let me inform you that you do not have to worry. The cares of yesterday no longer need to burden you today. He waved his arms expansively and continued. You have wasted years of your life trying to support a family. Take this opportunity to free yourself from those chains. Let them fend for themselves.

The creditors came to repossess the man’s home, but they insisted that he view this as an opportunity for a new start to his life. It wasn’t a tragedy—they were relieving him of the oppression of caring for a family.

Just think, one of the creditors added to the earlier assurances, you no longer have to waste your emotions on your immediate family. You can now serve humanity. Your family is everywhere. Your family is all living things—the ogres, the trees, the elves. They are your blood, just as much as your sons or daughters are.

Just then a loud cacophony erupted from an adjacent side of the town square. Several merchants were chasing a man who had stolen their wares. The thief pushed through the crowd, shoving people to the ground and climbing over their bodies in an attempt to flee.

Guards stationed at the corners of the square watched events unfold. A merchant scurried up to a guard. Sir, that man stole my frocks! Nine talins worth. I need them back.

The guard did not move or reply.

Hello?! the shopkeeper asked, confused.

You will back up or you will be heading to a cell, growled the guard. Stand down.

A look of disbelief took the merchant’s face. He retreated and returned to his stand, where he gathered up his belongings and left the square in a righteous furor.

The brown-robed man watched the situation intently and then professed to the crowds, This man, he has been taken! The thief has stolen his wares, but you must ask yourself, who is the thief? The merchant or the one who needed wares that only the merchant possessed? The ‘merchant’ no doubt commandeered those wares from the hides of his brothers and sisters! The two or three who had gathered to hear him nodded their heads.

Looming over the square was the House of Rights, an ornate building that housed a body of the same name. The elected legislators of Lectidomes met inside to debate and craft law. Lensus, a city representative, watched the chaos of the square from his chamber in the top story of the House.

Lensus noted the brown-robed man. He had seen proselytizers espousing the same anti-tradition views across the continent. Lensus had visited many Frissian cities in the line of duty.

Sitting on the other side of Lensus’s desk, behind him, was Schute, a cleric of Vursa, the goddess of life, death, and spirit. Lensus had known Schute since becoming an assemblyman. The cleric helped as an ambassador to the temples of Vursa and often counseled the assembly on issues relating to the domain of the goddess of life. Their relationship had become closer in recent times as they discovered their similar conclusions about the goings-on in the states of Phracia.

Have you discussed the state of things with the goddess? Lensus asked as he stood gazing on the scene below.

She says we have more than just problems in the cities. There are epic things happening in the spirit dimension also. The spirit dimension does not necessarily reflect our world, so this confluence of trends between the two could be unrelated. Nevertheless . . . Vursa did not give specifics, rarely does.

The rise in interest in this cult’s message—I see a pattern between it and other things. Lensus turned to face the cleric. Schute, we are in serious trouble.

Schute nodded gravely. I traveled all the way from Theodystynes to tell you that this observation is a unified one, just as you say. Are we safe to talk about it here?

Lensus shook his head.

Let me fix that. Schute raised his hand and closed his eyes. He spoke a call to the goddess of life. A shimmering light pulsed from his hand, then dissipated into a thousand streamers of light, each racing around the office until they had created an unseen barrier around them. The lights disappeared.

These cult members are everywhere on the continent, he continued. From Phyppios all the way to the southern reaches, nearly to Chwangau.

At the southern end of Phracia gathered the horrors of the continent, known across Repath Aos Vio. Undead roamed the land freely in Chwangau. Lances—undead beings who fed off the living, devouring their psyches, spirits, and their blood—built cities that prospered everywhere. Skeletal armies commanded by liches drove the borders of Chwangau ever northward. A great force of Spectral Empire units defended Eudybium, the Frissian country that touched the land of the undead and extended up to Stum Igbo, where the Spectral Empire positioned vast forces to defend Phracia.

Their sermon . . . Lensus mused, his thumb under his chin. "They want to erase history, to create a whole new order, one in which the common man is rootless.

I listen to them in the square. It is not just these cult people. It’s everywhere. It’s art, it’s a painting depicting a man in a brothel. It’s a bard singing a song about living like a drifter, about living like a spoiled aristocrat with no emotional ties to anyone. This is beyond a spontaneous expression of like-minded individuals. No doubt society would and should support people with different ways of living. However, this ideological movement is ubiquitous. It has to have been arranged by some central authority.

The cleric nodded. Who stands to gain from the effects of this change?

Someone who wants to disrupt the very order of things. Seems to me to suggest an enemy of Phasebios. Someone wants to weaken Spektros’s hold on its empire.

One could find many strange happenings in the states of Phracia: psychic wars, hauntings, beasts of legend such as Raven Dragons. One of the more recent happenings had been the spread of the Cult of Revolution. This loose family of individuals taught that all history was a mistake. All that could ever be considered good would be radically different from what had been. Their adherents had proselytized across the continent. They had begun, however, in Theodystynes and had spread to every corner of Phracia. The cultists took up spaces on town corners and built compounds deep in the Forests of Shadow. Their followers were encouraged to abandon the life of routine and to live without fear.

Then again, maybe the Biotians are finding it too difficult to manage such large holdings, said Schute. If they could weaken the constitutions of their vassals they would find things easier to control. This could definitely make controlling their empire even more difficult. It’s risky.

The Biotians could move large forces around Phracia in ways that other states could not fathom. Many believed the Biotians to possess powerful god-granted magic, their standing as Phracia’s aristocrats being a gift for the goodwill inherent in their people. On the other hand, some suggested that their powers came from demons, from striking terrible bargains with evil entities. Whatever the case, the continent was vast and controlling that much land took an incredible amount of resources.

Chapter 2

We will be assembling soon, said Lensus. Please bring up concerns about what we see going on. I will play the part of skeptic to your concerns and will try to draw out information about the possible culprits behind this—in personal discussions with the assembly.

Schute went silent after Lensus’s request. The cleric understood that if he criticized the Cult of Revolution he could be putting his life in danger. The sinister nature of many of the governors of Phracia was well known. They would not hesitate to kill even if it meant they were killing a representative of a godly order.

You can phrase it this way to avoid looking like you are actively seeking to find out who is behind the cult, Lensus assured him. Something like this: ‘I would like to ask if there is a way to stop this so-called Cult of Revolution from harassing our temple goers? Some of them are trying to lead our followers away from the gods.’

Phrased this way it would look like Schute was simply concerned with having Vursa’s worship disturbed, something that would be foolhardy. The gods did not like to interfere in the affairs of beings directly, but they could be angered if others tried to disrupt their followers’ devotion.

Schute agreed and the two friends made their way to the main hallway of the House of Rights. The assembly was meeting to discuss the state of the border between the Frissian state of Eudybium and Stum Igbo, the wildlands of the ogres and gnolls. Conflict between the two civilizations raged on and the land between them was a bloody battlefield.

The main chamber of the House of Rights was a pentagon with five sections of benches facing an open central dais. Murals of the history of Frissian battles and a scene of Bas handing the Keys to Empire to the Biotians were painted on the chamber ceiling.

A chatter of laughing and greetings filled the vestibule and the assembly chamber. Lensus and Schute took seats on opposite sides of the room. The representatives took their seats as the session president took to the dais.

Magic was banned in the assembly room, magic both arcane and divine, and if there were any enchantments detected on any assembly member, whether magically enchanted items or spells cast on an individual, they would be physically unable to enter the chamber. A powerful ward guarded against magical manipulation of events.

Let us come to order, announced the president. We are here to discuss the situation on the northern border of Eudybium. But first I would like to allow some time to discuss local matters. The president, a ranking member of the assembly of Lectidomes, unfolded a parchment. "We are having a parade tomorrow to celebrate the Coming of the Winds, the historic celebration of the battle between Lectidomes and the ancient undead known