Location: Monthaven – what’s left of it
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Spring
There is a particular brand of cruelty reserved for the gods who claim to love us. Mortal hate is a simple thing—it burns, it kills, and it leaves behind a clean ash. But divine love? Divine love is a cage woven of emerald silk and golden lies. It preserves the beloved in a state of perpetual agony, shielding the flesh while the spirit is flayed raw.
Alyssa, in her infinite ‘mercy,’ kept her champion safe behind a winter wall while the world he cherished was reduced to a slaughterhouse. She gave him the gift of Arbolan grace and the precision of the Azora, yet she denied him the one thing that might have saved his soul: the truth. She watched from the humid depths of Meridia as the shadows lengthened over Monthaven, a master puppeteer admiring the tension in her strings. To her, the destruction of the Azop line was merely a necessary pruning, a way to sharpen the ‘reed’ of the prophecy until it was lethal enough to serve her ends.
She called it destiny. I call it vanity – it’s all so meaningless, like chasing after the wind. Either way, Emcorae was about to learn a brutal lesson at the hand of the goddess…
The Homecoming Parade
The transition from the lush, budding hills of Pennal to the outskirts of Monthaven was not marked by a border, but by a sudden, sickening shift in the wind. The sweet scent of mountain laurel was devoured by a miasma that Emcorae felt in the back of his throat before he saw its source: the heavy stench of burned out buildings, stagnant water, and the faint rot of the unburied.
It’s just a fire in the valley, he tried to tell himself, his grip tightening on Joanne’s reins until the leather bit into his palms. A brush fire. Farmers clearing land for spring. It has to be. But the logic failed against the alarm bells ringing in his head.
The urgency in his chest to see Lynsy safe was becoming a physical ache, a frantic thrumming that drowned out the rhythmic clatter of Joanne’s hooves. He had to get to her even before he saw his family, but couldn’t risk the main road for his mind was a storm of doubts. Seeking the quickest path to the eastern side of the village, he chose to cross the Suskil River at a shallow, rocky ford a mile below the town. The water was cold and churning with the spring melt, splashing against his shins, but he barely felt the chill. Once on the other side, he made straight for the Finch Estate, cutting through the dense hardwoods of the valley floor.
For a few fleeting moments, a desperate hope flickered in his heart. The woods here seemed untouched—the ancient oaks stood tall, and the trillium bloomed in quiet, undisturbed clusters. Perhaps the people near Crux were wrong, he thought, his pulse leaping. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as they said. Surely Merrill’s guards held the line.
But as his path crested the final ridge overlooking the estate, that hope was strangled in his throat. Emcorae pulled Joanne to a violent halt. His breath hitched, turning into a jagged sob that he couldn’t quite release. Below him lay the Finch Estate, or what was left of it. Once the undisputed jewel of Pennal—a sprawling manor of white stone that had glowed like a pearl against the green hills—it was now a blackened ribcage of ruin. The manicured gardens where Lynsy had once cut roses for the dinner table were ripped-up fields of ash and mud, still showing sighs of a recent battle. Even the great stone wall that had ringed the manor, a symbol of the family’s wealth and security, lay in shambles, its heavy blocks scattered like a child’s discarded toys.
The manor house itself was a hollowed-out shell. The grand, timber-framed roof had collapsed inward during the inferno, leaving the massive stone chimneys standing in solitary, grotesque defiance. They looked like jagged, soot-stained fingers pointing accusingly at the indifferent spring sky, as if demanding to know why the gods had watched them burn.
“Lynsy,” he whispered, the name sounding fragile and pathetic against the backdrop of such total devastation. He stared at the blackened void where the grand staircase should have been. There was no sign of life—no servants hauling water, no guards on the wall, no strawberry-blond girl waving from a balcony. There was only the smell of cold charcoal and the mocking, vibrant green of the grass beginning to grow through the bones of his future.
No. Not the manor. Not Lynsy’s window. He stared at the void where her room had been. I was supposed to climb that trellis tonight. I was supposed to hear her laugh. Every instinct screamed at him to gallop into the ruins, to dig through the ash with his bare hands, but his Azora training held his hand steady on the reins. He looked at the scorched earth and the damaged etched into every blackened timber, and he knew: this wasn’t just a fire. This was a message. And he knew it was meant for him.
The sight of the Finch ruins ignited a terrifying chain reaction in Emcorae’s mind. If the most powerful family in the valley, with their stone walls and hired steel, had been reduced to a skeletal remains, what hope did a humble carpenter and a tavern-hound have?
“By Baal, my family!” Emcorae gasped, his voice cracking. A cold sweat broke out beneath his silver breastplate. If this was Diked’s vengeance for his forbidden love with Lynsy, then every person who bore the name Azop was a target.
Panic, sharp and jagged, replaced the numb despair of a moment ago. He wrenched Joanne’s head around, the mare snorting in protest as he spurred her down from the ridge. They flew across the scorched remnants of the Finches’ pastures, the hooves of the horse kicking up clouds of earth. He bypassed the main road, his instincts screaming at him to avoid the town center, at least for now.
As he neared the Suskil again as it cut through the village, he saw the stone church of Monthaven still standing, a gray sentinel amidst the desolation. Part of him wanted to fly to its doors, to beg Pastor Kastelli for news, but a darker, more primitive instinct pulled him away – his mind flying back to the time as a boy when the gargoyle chased him and the church offered no refuge. So he skirted the village outskirts, his eyes darting frantically between the blackened husks of homes he once recognized – The Middlewarths, The Wirtzs, and others. He briefly wondered if his grandfather Alfranco was at the Brandonale tavern and he almost turned in that direction, but again instinct pushed him away. I’ll bet grandpop is there, but let me just check on the rest of the family first.
He rode on – aiming for home, yet the silence of the outskirts was deafening. Monthaven had always been a cacophony of life—the lowing of cattle in the morning mist, the rhythmic thump-thump of the weaver’s looms, and the distant, melodic ringing of the blacksmith’s anvil that had been the heartbeat of his childhood. Now, the valley was a tomb. The only sound was the eerie, rhythmic snap-flap of a tattered banner caught on a splintered gate, and the occasional, lonely thud of a hammer from deep within the town, sounding less like construction and more like the nailing of a coffin.
He passed a few cottages on the fringe, closer to the Azop lands They were empty husks, their windows staring like the hollow sockets of a skull. In the middle of the road, he saw a child’s wooden horse—a toy he recognized from the neighbor’s boy—now half-melted and caked in a thick, greasy soot.
Where is everyone? The thought pounded against his temples like a war drum.
As he reached the final turn toward his home, he saw a row of ancient oak trees that had once shaded the road. They hadn’t just been burned; they had been twisted into grotesque, blackened shapes by a heat so intense it had warped the very grain of the wood. The ground beneath Joanne’s hooves shifted from spring mud to a gray, powdery slush—a mixture of ash, charcoal, and a gritty bone-dust that made the mare shiver.
Then, he spied it.
The sight of his family’s hovel – it wasn’t merely ruined; it was…erased. The thatched roof that had always smelled of dry summer grass, the sturdy wooden beams his father, Alboris, had reinforced with such pride just a year ago, the kitchen where his grandmother, Pallina, had spent her days cooking all those amazing meals—all of it had been consumed by a hunger that left nothing behind. Only a few blackened foundation stones remained, encircling a pit of cold, gray ash that shimmered like ghost-dust in the spring light.
“Gram? Ma? Teree?” The names began to loop in his mind, a frantic, rhythmic prayer that offered no salvation. He stood at the edge of the perimeter, staring at the void where the hearth had once beat like the heart of the home. He could almost see Pallina there, humming as she stirred a pot of pottage for the evening meal. He wondered with a sickening lurch if Alboris had been home, or if he had been at the Brandonale Tavern, perhaps raising a glass to a son he thought was safe in the wood. And Beckali who loved him so much. And Teree… his little sister, whose bright, piercing laughter had been the only music this small space ever needed. And Chich – oh poor Chich – was the little dog gone goo?
“Please, Alyssa,” he choked out, his voice cracking as he searched the shifting ash for any sign, any footprint that didn’t belong to the wind. “If you have any mercy left in your green heart, tell me they ran. Tell me they are with Curk and the Frixers, or even out on the North farm with mama’s family The Grengers. Tell me… tell me I didn’t kill them with my foolishness.”
He dismounted, the fine elven leather of his boots sinking deep into the powdery, cloying remains of his old life. The silver of his Arbolan armor felt like a heavy, mocking shackle. He knelt, his fingers brushing aside a layer of soot to reveal a warped, blackened piece of metal. It was one of his grandmother Pallina’s cooking pots—the heavy iron one she had used to feed three generations of Azops. It was twisted and melted, a silent testament to a fire so hot it had defied the laws of nature.
The guilt hit him then, a physical blow that doubled him over. The time he’d spent in Arbola had been his family’s death sentence.
I could have done more to get away, he hissed, his nails digging into the ash-choked earth. I could have fought harder. I could have been here to stand between them and the flame! The self-loathing turned inward, a venomous snake biting its own tail. Why did I ever think I could reach for a life above my station? Why did I get mixed up in a love I had no business wanting? Lynsy was promised to another. I ruined it. It’s my fault. My family’s blood is on me!
But then, from the deepest, most wounded part of his soul, his heart screamed a rebuttal. No! Lynsy was meant for me. She was the only truth you ever found in this world. This isn’t my sin. His eyes snapped toward the north, towards Orkney – a place he’d never been but where he knew his enemy lived. His pupils dilated until they were twin pits of obsidian; the grief didn’t vanish, it transformed into a hardened, lethal edge of pure, unadulterated hatred. An insane need for revenge took hold of his heart, a cold fire that burned hotter than the one that had taken his home.
“I vow here and now,” he growled, his voice vibrating with the Azora power he had honed in the woods, “by the High Council, by the Old Gods, and by the very soil that holds my family’s ash… I will destroy Diked. I will tear his world down stone by stone until there is nothing left but the smell of his fear.”
He stood up, the scorched cooking pot still gripped in his hand like a broken shield. “He will pay for my mother. He will pay for Alboris and Teree. For Alfranco , Pallina, and Chich. And he will pay for…L-L-Lynsy.” He fought back hot tears. “I will never stop, I will never sleep, and I will never show mercy until that worm is in the grave—even if I have to follow him there myself!”
At that moment, the wind picked up, swirling the ash of the Azop hovel around him in a grey whirlwind. Emcorae didn’t flinch. He looked toward the town center, toward the spire of the church where the survivors were huddling in their fear, and he knew his path was no longer about recovery. It was about discovery – if he was going to get revenge, he needed information about what really happened here.
The Congregation of the Damned
As Emcorae remounted Joanne, his eyes were no longer wet with grief; they were hard, flat discs of obsidian. He rode toward the village square, the rhythmic clack-clack of Joanne’s hooves on the cobblestones sounding like a drumroll for an execution. the contrast between the scorched outskirts compared to the town center was a descent into a different kind of hell.
As he turned onto the main thoroughfare, he saw them – the survivors of Monthaven were not hiding in their cellars; they had gathered in the shadow of the church. There were perhaps sixty of them—a pitiful remnant of a bustling population. They stood in clusters, draped in soot-stained wool and tattered cloaks, listening to their leader.
At the center of the steps stood Pastor Kastelli. The overweight cleric projected strength, his black robes powdered with grey ash, but his eyes burning with a zealot’s fever. He held a heavy, iron-bound volume—the Psalms of Enok—high above his head, his voice echoing off the hollowed-out storefronts.
“…and the Prophet warned of the Reed that would bend toward the Sun and bring the Fire!” Kastelli bellowed. “It is the fruit of the Forbidden Tree! We now know it is the curse of the Azop!”
The crowd’s murmur was a low, guttural snarl that died instantly as Emcorae rode into the light.
Yet Emcorae did not hide from their sight. He sat tall in his silver-chased Arbolan breastplace, the afternoon sun catching the elegant, elven filigree on his chest. To the starving, smoke-blackened villagers, he looked like a cruel joke—a prince of the forest arriving to inspect a graveyard he had helped create.
“Look at him!” a woman shrieked, pointing a skeletal finger. It was Sally Middleswarth, who had lost her husband Jon and their shop in the first night of the fire. “He wears the silk of the demons while our children sleep in the ash!”
“Where were you, Emcorae Azop?” a man shouted from the back. It was the mason Hal Sutton’s brother, his face a map of fresh burns. “Where was your elven magic when the King’s Butcher was carving the life out of this valley? You brought him here! You and that Finch girl!”
Emcorae pulled Joanne to a halt a dozen paces from the church steps. He looked at them—people who had known him since he was a babe, people who had shared ale with his father and grandfather many a time at The Bradonale as they listened to Alfranco’s many yarns.
“I came as soon as the passes were clear,” Emcorae said, his voice strong and confident. “LIsten to me – I will take revenge. For for my family and yours!”
But if he thought that might win the crowd to his side, Emcorae was wrong. Kastelli stepped forward, the Psalms of Enok trembling in his grip. “There is no family left for you here, boy. Your name is a rot in the soil of Monthaven. Enok spoke of the ‘Scion of the Shadow’ who would lead the wolf to the fold. You bedded the Orkney King’s promised mate and left us to pay the price in blood!”
“I didn’t choose the Diked’s madness!” Emcorae roared back. “People. You know me!”
“We don’t know you any more. And you chose the sin!” Kastelli countered, his voice rising to a shriek. “In your youth you brought the gargoyle here – I had to defend you from that. And now I must lead my sheep through more devastation as a result of your hand. But where were you? You fled to the safety of the elves while your mother screamed in the fire! Do you see the church, Emcorae? It stands because Mannah spared the righteous. Your house is a pit because the gods have judged you!”
The crowd surged forward, a wave of grey and brown rags. A stone sailed through the air, clanging sharply against Emcorae’s silver pauldron. Another caught Joanne on the flank, making the mare rear up with a panicked whinny.
“Go back to your woods, elf lover!” someone shouted, while others added, “You killed them! You killed them all!”
Emcorae looked at their faces—the twisted, hungry masks of people who needed someone to blame. They couldn’t take revenge against a far away northern king, so they raged against him – here and now. He realized with a sickening jolt that he was no longer one of them. To them, he was the monster.
“Trust me.” Emcorae hissed, the Azora fire beginning to prickle beneath his skin. “I will find the ones responsible. I will—”
“You are the one responsible!” Kastelli screamed, pointing the heavy book at him like a weapon. “By the laws of Enok, we cast you out! Stone the curse! Drive the plague from our gates!”
A hail of rocks and debris erupted from the mob. Emcorae raised his arm to shield his face, his heart turning to stone. He had come home seeking a reason to fight for his people, but as he looked into their eyes, he realized he had no people left.
Just as the crowd prepared to rush him, a heavy hand grabbed Joanne’s bridle from the side, pulling the horse toward a narrow alley between two half-collapsed buildings.
“Move, you fool!” a familiar, gravelly voice hissed. “Unless you want to be the last thing they burn!”
It was Curk Frixer, his old friend’s face smudged with soot but his eyes clear. Before the mob could reach them, Curk led Joanne into the shadows, disappearing from the square just as a piece of timber hit the spot where they had been standing.
Sanctuary
Curk didn’t speak until they were back on his family’s land, weaving through shadows of the village that smelled of damp ash and scorched grain. He kept a firm, white-knuckled grip on Joanne’s bridle, pulling the mare along as if he were leading a ghost through a graveyard.
“Quiet now, Em,” Curk hissed, his eyes darting toward the jagged silhouette of the church behind them. “Kastelli has them looking for a devil, and you’re wearing the brightest skin in the valley. If they see that silver armor again, I can’t stop them.”
They reached the remains of the Frixer’s property. While the upper floor had been gutted by the heat, the foundation—built of thick, Pennal fieldstone—remained intact. Curk led them to a heavy cellar door concealed beneath a pile of charred timbers. With a grunt of effort, he heaved it open, revealing a dark, sloping staircase.
As they descended, the oppressive silence of the ruined town was replaced by the low, flickering amber of a single tallow candle. But then came a sudden, frantic scratching sounded from the corner. A small, mottled blur erupted from the shadows, barking in sharp, joyous yaps that sliced through the tension.
“Chich!” Emcorae gasped, dropping to his knees. The family dog, a scruffy runt who had survived the inferno against all odds, threw herself at Emcorae, licking his face with a desperate, whining intensity. The dog’s fur was singed in patches, but her spirit was the only thing in Monthaven that seemed unchanged.
“She’s been waiting,” a soft voice said. Kymm, Curk’s wife, stepped out of the gloom, her face pale but kind. She held a bowl of thin broth, her eyes widening as she took in Emcorae’s regal, elven attire. “She knew you were coming, Emcorae. Somehow she knew.”
But then Emcorae’s eyes were drawn past Kymm, to a slumped figure sitting in a wooden chair near the small hearth.
It was Alfranco.
The man who had once been the roaring soul of the Brandonale Tavern—the gaffer who could out-drink any man and out-laugh a storm—was a ghost of his former self. He sat wrapped in a threadbare quilt, his old chest hollowed out, his hands trembling as they rested on his knees. His eyes, usually bright with mischief, were filmed over with a milky, vacant stare.
“Grandfather?” Emcorae whispered, stepping forward.
Alfranco didn’t look up at first. He seemed to be listening to a sound only he could hear. “Is that… is that the wind?” he rasped, his voice a dry, papery rattle. “The wind sounds like silver today, Kymm. Does it mean the fire is coming back?”
“No, Grandfather,” Emcorae choked out, falling to his sides at the old man’s feet. He took Alfranco’s hands—they were as cold as the Suskil in winter. “It’s me. It’s Emcorae. I’m home.”
Alfranco’s head tilted slowly, his eyes finally finding his grandson’s face. For a moment, a spark of the old Al-Corragio flared—a flicker of recognition, but it was immediately drowned by a wave of agonizing grief.
“Emcorae?” the old man whispered, his lip trembling. “You… you weren’t there, boy. I looked for you. I looked for Pallina. I looked for all of them.. but the house… the house was…gone.”
He began to weep, not with the loud wails of the villagers, but with a silent, rhythmic shaking that broke Emcorae’s heart more than any scream could have. “Alyssa… she put me to sleep, Em. I was in the tavern, and the world went dark, and when I woke up… everything I loved was ash. Why did she save the old drunk and let the blossoms burn? Why am I still here?”
Curk stepped forward, his hand heavy and grounding on Emcorae’s silver-clad shoulder. The leather of his glove was stained with the red clay of the Pennal fields, a far cry from the fine tools he used to handle as a cobbler’s apprentice to his dad.
“He’s been like this since we found him,” Curk said, his voice dropping to a somber rasp. “Doc Wirtz says it’s the shock, mixed with whatever happened to him at The Brandonale. He says the old man’s mind just… retreated. He stays here with us, in the dark. It’s the only way to keep him breathing, Em. The others… they’d kill him just for being an Azop. They’ve spent every night since the fire looking for a throat to cut, and they think your blood is what drew the monster Kaoz to our gates.”
Emcorae leaned his head against his grandfather’s bony knees. The rough wool of the quilt scratched against his cheek, but he didn’t pull away. The weight of his vow for revenge felt more urgent, more caustic, than ever before. He had spent months in Arbola dreaming of this homecoming—of being the hero who returned to save his family. But he was too late. The hearth was cold, the loom was ash, and family were ghosts. Everything he loved was gone—gone!
“I’m going to take care of you, Grandfather,” Emcorae promised, his voice hardening into a cold, lethal edge that seemed to vibrate in the small cellar. “I’m going to get you to safety, and then I’m going to bring a forest of fire down on Diked for what he did to us. I’ll make him scream for every ember he dropped on Monthaven.”
But Alfranco didn’t hear the vow. His milky eyes remained fixed on a flickering shadow on the stone wall. He was already drifting back into the haze where the fire couldn’t reach him. “The wind,” the old man muttered, a ghostly smile touching his cracked lips. “It sounds like silver, Em… like silver leaves in the rain.”
Emcorae rose. He wiped the soot and tears from his face and turned to his friend. The candlelight caught the new, hard lines around Emcorae’s mouth.
“Curk,” he said, his voice steadying. “Tell me everything. How did you survive? And how is your family? Sandi and Rik… are they well?”
Curk sighed, leaning back against a support beam, his eyes tracking the flickering shadows on the cellar wall as if he were watching the carnage play out all over again. “My mother is alive, thank the gods. She’s upstairs now, trying to mend what’s left of our clothes, though there’s more charcoal than wool in some of those rags. But my father…” Curk’s jaw tightened, the muscle leaping in his cheek. “Rik didn’t make it. I tried to make him stay, but he headed for the square with me and the others.”
Curk paused, his breathing hitching. “My dad was brave, Em. He stood his ground on the church steps, rallying the Suttons and old man Mercaldo. At first we all thought it was just a band of hellions from the forest we could drive off with grit and iron. But then IT stepped into the firelight.”
Curk’s voice dropped to a terrified whisper. “It wasn’t a man. It was a giant grey monster—a nightmare wrapped in the skin of a warrior. The thing moved with a speed that made the air whistle, his dark skin absorbing the light of the burning buildings. We swarmed him, Em. Ten of us, then twenty. Hal Sutton drove a pitchfork clean into the beast’s side, and Mercaldo swung a heavy axe with enough force to fell an ox.”
He shook his head, a look of pure disbelief crossing his face. “It did nothing, buddy, nothing! The pitchfork snapped like a dry twig against his skin. The axe bounced off his shoulder as if he were made of solid diamond. That thing didn’t even flinch; he just laughed—a hollow, metallic sound—and backhanded Mercaldo so hard the man’s neck snapped before he hit the cobbles. He was like an immortal, Em. A force of nature that fed on our desperation.”
“My father… went down quick. I tried to keep him away, but in the chaos I lost him. Rik swung that wood-axe with everything he had, catching the monster right in the throat. I saw the blade bite. I saw the spark of impact. But there was no blood, only a hiss of purple vapor. That thing reached out, slow and deliberate, and gripped the axe head with one hand, crushing the iron into dust. Then he struck. My father was gone too soon—he died right there on the church steps, the white stone turning red as the battle raged on around him.”
Curk’s hand went to a jagged, puckered scar running from his collarbone to his ribs, hidden beneath his tunic. “I tried to avenge him. I lunged in while the beast was distracted. I laid a mark or two on him for sure—I felt my blade get him—but it was like stabbing a shadow. He swatted me aside like a pestering fly. I woke up in the mud three hours later, the town already a pyre. We never had a chance – a bunch of country bumpkins against some magical monster! You ever heard of such a creature?”
“It was surely a Myz!” Emcorae advised. “I’ve never seen one but the Azora’s talk of them. And Alfranco told many a tale at The Brandonale about them. It had to be that.”
“Whatever it was destroyed Monthaven. That’s why the villagers hate you, Em,” Curk said, looking his friend in the eye. “They saw what a real monster looks like. They saw that village courage meant nothing against a Myz. And since they can’t kill that beast, and they can’t reach the King that sent it, they want the blood of the man who brought that shadow to their valley. They want to believe that if they kill you, their nightmare will end. They’re fools the lot of them – driven mad by Kastelli.”
Curk tried to lighten the mood.“And here’s the bit that’ll stick in the craw of every ‘righteous’ soul in Monthaven, Em: the ones keeping us from starvation aren’t the ones praying on the church steps. It’s the Grengers. While Kastelli is busy counting his tithes and quoting the Psalms of Enok to justify our misery, your uncles, Jon and Jim, have been hauling wagons of grain and timber into town every dawn. They’ve opened their northern farm to anyone with a broken roof or an empty belly. The very men this village drove out years ago because your grandfather Mo wouldn’t sell your mother to that merchant Stapelton… they’re the ones saving this town the most.”
Emcorae felt a sharp, jagged irony twist in his chest as he listened. The name Jon Stapelton echoed in his mind like a mocking laugh from the past. Stapelton had been Merrill Finch’s business partner—the very man whose connections in Primcitta were supposed to be Emcorae’s salvation. Back in Arbola, he had spent weeks mapping out a future where he and Lynsy would flee to the coast, working for Stapelton’s associates to vanish into the bustle of the city. He had planned to build a life on the foundation of the man who had once tried to buy his mother. Now, the grand escape was a charcoal ruin, and the town’s only hope lay with the kinsmen who had been ostracized by the people in the past.
Curl looked down at his calloused, dirt-stained hands, growing sad. “The cobbler shop is gone, Em. There’s no leather to be had, and no one has the coin for shoes anyway. I’ve been out in the Grenger fields every day, breaking my back to pull enough from the soil just to keep Kymm fed.” He glanced toward his wife, his expression softening with a flicker of fierce protectiveness. “Kymm is with child, Em. A winter babe. I have to stay. I have to make sure this town has a future, even if it’s built on ash.”
Curk leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I’m not just farming, Em. Kastelli is a cancer. He’s using those Psalms of Enok to turn people into animals. He wants a flock of frightened sheep he can rule. I’m biding my time, helping the neighbors rebuild their walls, sharing what little grain I have. When the time is right, I’m going to strip that black robe off him. Others will help me – Doc Wirtz, The Suttons, and more. Monthaven needs a mayor who knows what it’s like to bleed for this soil, not a priest who sends our coin to Primcitta’s Monarch.”
Emcorae looked at his friend and saw a different kind of warrior—one forged by the plow and the struggle for survival. “You’re a better man than I, Curk. You want to save this place. All I want to do is find Diked and burn him alive!”
The Apocrypha of Azazel 