Location: The Road North
Timeline: Summer
How delicious it is to watch a mortal’s ambition collide with the stubborn physics of the earth. Emcorae burned with a fire that could consume a kingdom, yet he was tethered to the rhythmic, plodding gait of a mule. Every league he gained was a battle against the fraying patience of his mind. And behind him, the elfess struggled to keep her distance, yet not lose sight of Emcorae, even as she was losing her own mind.
The Plodding North
By the fourth day, the rolling hills of Southern Pennal toward had become a torment of dust and slow-motion progress in the summer sun. Emcorae sat in Joanne’s saddle, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached. Behind him, tethered by a heavy lead rope, the pack mule Grom let out a low, defiant bray. Grom was laden with his Azora gear, winter clothes, and sacks of grain. The weight made the mule’s hooves sink deeper into the sun-baked silt of the road, dragging their collective pace down to what felt like miserable crawl.
In his mind, Emcorae was already standing in the ruins of Monthaven. In reality, he was lucky to cover eight leagues between sunrise and dusk.
“Burn it all,” Emcorae hissed, glaring back at the beast of burden. “If I cut the lead, if I leave the iron for the crows, I could cover twice this distance and get to Diked faster.”
His hand went to his belt knife, the blade halfway out of its sheath. He imagined the release of it—the mule wandering off into the scrub, the sudden lightness of Joanne’s stride. But then he looked at his own silver armor, now caked in a dull, grey mask of road-grime beneath his traveling cloak. If he arrived at the gates of Fubar with nothing but a sword and a starving horse, he wouldn’t be a messenger of justice. He would be a sacrifice.
“Patience is a weapon too, Emcorae,” he muttered, repeating a mantra of El-Janus that felt like ash in his mouth.
He looked at Joanne. The elven mare was a creature of stamina and energy, and the slow, heavy pace was agitating her too. She tossed her head, snorted often, and itched to do more. She wanted to run—to let her white-dappled legs devour the leagues—but the lead rope to Grom remained taut, a physical manifestation of the baggage Emcorae couldn’t yet shed.
“Quiet, girl,” he grumbled, his voice thick with dust. “We go as fast as the beast allows. For now.”
That evening, Emcorae sat by a fire no larger than a man’s hand, tucked into the lee of a limestone shelf. As was his ritual, he was meticulously working a whetstone against the edge of his katana, the rhythmic shhh-shhh the only music he allowed himself. His mind was a chaotic forge, hammering out images of the horror of his family’s ruined hovel and the ruins of the Finch estate until they were as sharp as his blades.
“We must go faster,” he whispered into the dark, his voice a dry rasp. “Sylvania is but three leagues north, yet we’ll not stop at the gates or enter their inn. We can’t keep Diked waiting.”
He looked at his mare. Joanne, an elven horse of the highest lineage, stood with her head low, her coat stained with the yellow dust of the road. She nudged his shoulder, not for affection, but with a sharp, demanding butt of her head.
“I know,” Emcorae hissed, his voice full of guilt. “You are tired. I am tired. That mule is tried too. The whole world is tired. But the king’s Myz does not sleep, Joanne. For all we know that monster is out there, hunting us. We must keep moving and stay alert.”
Less than a league behind, Nathily was camped as well. The covert path she’d chosen was paved with boredom and depression. She’d followed the trail easily enough, besides Emcorae’s apparent hastiness and lack of any attempt to cover his tracks, there was also the earthy scent of the mule and the heavy indentation of its overloaded hooves. She had to stay far enough back that Emcorae wouldn’t spot her in the farmlands between the hills, yet close enough that the wind wouldn’t scour his tracks from the sunburnt grass.
Mossflower was grazing nearly, while Nathily lay with her back to a tree with a fatigue that felt bone-deep – her mind was as distressed as the man she was following. She was profoundly homesick. The memory of the Regent’s house—the smell of beeswax, the soft, blue-gold light of the evening lamps, the sound of her mother’s humming—felt like a dream she had had centuries ago. She looked at her hands. They were blistered and caked in the gritty soil of the road. She reached for her falchia, the curved elven blade she had worn with pride in the training circles.
“You wanted to be an Azora,” she whispered to herself, her voice cracking. “You wanted to walk the Path of the Shadow. Well, here it is.”
She pulled out a piece of waybread, but her throat was too dry to swallow. Her mind kept drifting to the encounter at the Council. She saw Emcorae standing in the center of the hall – disappointed by her people’s refusal to help him…again.
“He thinks he is going to find justice, but he is only looking for a place to fall. If I don’t catch him before he reaches Orkney, there will be nothing left of him to save.”
Mossflower nickered softly, stepping closer. The elven mare remained a steady, warm anchor for the girl. She leaned her head against Nathily’s, breathing her warmth onto the elf’s sun-scorched face.
“We go on, Mossflower,” Nathily whispered, clutching the vial of Suns-breath moss Dallegheri had given her. “We go on because I promised. I promised the Goddess, I promised my heart, and I promised him—even if he doesn’t know it.”
She looked beyond her camp to the countryside – the unexpected isolation of the “Dead World” of humanity outside the forest was not what she expected. To her elven senses, human life was a habit of nothingness. Even when she’d spied other travelers on the road during the previous days, she’d avoided them as best she could – they were not her people and she didn’t want to be reminded of all that she’d left behind.
“Dallegheri said Em needs to become who he must be,” she whispered into Mossflower’s mane. “But I’m afraid of what that might be.”
She clutched againthe hilt of her curved blade. She was still a warrior-in-training, but out here, without the safety of the training Glades, she felt like an immature elfess’ playing at the world. Every time she saw thought of Emcorae she felt a wave of relief, but that was immediately followed by a cold dread.
She was choosing to follow a man who was building a fortress of rage, one slow, agonizing league at a time. And what would become of her by the time this journey ended?
As the fifth night approached, the landscape began to change once more. The vast openness of the rolling hills was broken by broader valleys and the silhouettes of more farmhouses and orchards. This was the hinterland of Sylvania, a town that sat at the vital artery where the Easton-Weston Road met the Great Parkway. The crossroads city was situation where the Easton-Weston Road met the Great Parkway and while one might see the ocassional elf or dwarf, it was mostly a wild mix of human travelers from throughout TerrVerde. There were rich merchants from Primcitta, courtiers on business between the various petty kingdoms, farmers selling her wares, and the list went on and on.
Emcorae reached the ridge overlooking the town just as the sun dipped below the horizon, bleeding a deep, bruised purple into the sky. Below him, Sylvania was a cluster of orange sparks—torchlights on the walls and the smoky fires of travelers’ camps.
Grom, the mule, let out a loud, shuddering bray. Emcorae dismounted, his stiff joints popping. He looked at the town gates, where guards in rusted iron caps were extorting coins from a line of weary farmers.
“If I enter, I am delayed by half a day,” Emcorae reasoned, his internal dialogue a sharp, tactical calculation. “The tolls, the questions, the eyes of the curious. But if I go around, the terrain is rougher. Grom might come up lame. I wonder what grandpop would do?”
He looked at the lead rope. He hated the mule. He hated the supplies. He hated even the air he was breathing. For a moment, he pictured himself riding Joanne into the town, selling the mule and the wares for a pittance, and vanishing into the North like a ghost.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “I need my gear for what comes after in Orkney. We go around. We stay in the dark.”
He led the clattering group down the back of the ridge, skirting the western walls of Sylvania by a wide margin. He moved like a thief, his silver armor hidden beneath a tattered grey cloak.
Behind him, riding through the cooling air, Nathily saw him veer away from the town. She felt a pang of disappointment—she had hoped for the warmth of an inn and a bath—but she didn’t hesitate. She steered Mossflower into the rougher scrub, following the sound of Grom’s heavy, rhythmic plodding.
“I choose the dark,” she reminded herself, her fingers tracing the Moon-Lily on the ledge of her memory.
Eventually both of them moved past the crossroads, shadows in the night, heading toward a Great Unknown that was eager to meet them.
The Bitter Pill
Nearly a week later, Emcorae reached outskirts of Monthaven – a landscape of charcoal and regret. He left Joanne and the mule tethered in a ravine where a hiddenglade, away from the dry, acrid scent of the burn zone and then moved through the brush with the silence of a mountain cat – heading for his old home.
He reached the perimeter of his family’s land as the sun reached its zenith. Where his father’s small carpentry shed had stood, there was only a hollowed-out scar in the earth. The family house fared no better – it was now but a slumped pile of soot-stained boards – the timber frames Alboris and Alfranco had once joined were now nothing but splinters reaching for a darkening sky.
Emcorae knelt in the center of the ruins. He reached into the ash and pulled out a warped, blackened chisel head. The handle had been consumed long ago, but the iron remained.
“You built things to last, Da,” he whispered, his voice catching in a throat raw from the road. “You told me wood remembers the hand that shaped it. But what does the ash remember?”
He tucked the iron head into his belt – a relic of a life that was now lost to him.
A short time later, he made his way through the woods to his old friend Curk’s home. Their small but growingfarm of stood like a defiant island of normalcy in a sea of devastation that was the village. Emcorae watched from behind a gnarled apple tree as the farmhouse door swung open. Curk emerged, looking a bit older, his broad shoulders hunched with the weight of the labor required to keep a farm alive when the world was ending. Kymm followed, stepping out into the afternoon sun with a bundle of linen held close to her chest – it was their baby.
The child let out a thin, wavering cry, and Emcorae saw Curk reach out to touch the infant’s tiny hand with a gentle caress. The couple shared a look of such profound tenderness that made Emcorae flinch – his heart was happy in spite of himself. He wanted to reveal himself to his friends and he knew they’d be glad to see him, yet he stopped himself. First off because he knew the town still hated him and blamed him for the wrath of Diked and he didn’t want to bring that down up on Curk’s family. And even more so because Emcorae did not want to spend any time being ‘happy’ – he didn’t want to put himself into a position where he might need to share Curk’s joy. For at this time in his life, Emcorae wanted only one thing – to kill his enemies! He wanted to be part of the Darkness, not the Light.
As a result, he quickly moved on.
He reached the Finch Estate in the late afternoon – taking both Joanne and the mule on a long journey around the southern outskirts of town. Again he left the beasts hobbled in a quiet haven, and then made his way covertly for a look at Lynsy’s old home. He was expecting to find the same scorched violence that he’d met at the ruins of his family’s house. He remembered the last time he’d seen it – the way the manor had looked like a guttering candle. But as he emerged from the woods this time, the sound of rhythmic hammering met his ears, a mocking echo of the carpentry his family once loved.
Emcorae was surprised to see the estate was crawling with men. Scaffolding of fresh, white pine rose against the blackened stone walls of the manor. The smell of raw sap and wet mortar hung in the air, an offensive odor that clutched at his lungs. Emcorae’s eyes narrowed, searching the bustle of the site. His gaze locked onto a figure standing atop a newly finished stone balcony. The man wore a doublet of deep crimson, his hands resting arrogantly on the railing as he barked orders at the masons below.
Dugan.
A cold shock ran down Emcorae’s spine. He didn’t know about the letter Lynsy’s brother had sent to Diked. All he knew was that Dugan—the man who had always looked at Lynsy as an object and at Emcorae with a dismissive air—was alive, well, and overseeing the reconstruction of her house.
“How did you survive?” Emcorae hissed, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the hilt of his sword. “Everything that was good was burned. Everything that was light was taken. So why do you remain, Dugan? How did you walk through the fire while Lynsy became ash?”
The suspicion was a poisonous bloom. To Emcorae, Dugan’s survival in the face of the Myz’s rampage felt like an impossibility – or perhaps something worse. He had to know more!
From afar, deep in the southern woods and perched in a tall oak, Nathily watched – her elven sight easily allowing her to observe Emcorae’s actions. She had seen him at the carpentry ruins, her heart breaking as he sifted through the remains of his family’s life. She had seen the way he recoiled from the sight of the baby at the other farm. But here, overlooking this manor, she saw a change that terrified her. The grief had been replaced by a predatory look.
“He’s found a target,” she whispered, her forehead leaning against the trunk. “He’s not mourning anymore. He’s questing for revenge and that man on the balcony will surely pay. I wonder who he is?”
She saw the man in the red doublet and she worried at that the look on Emcorae’s face – it was the look of a man who was about to cross a line from which there was no return.
“I choose him,” she reminded herself. “But I pray I am strong enough to catch him before he falls too far.”
The Ghost in the Thicket
Emcorae pulled back from the manor wall, his heart hammering a jagged rhythm against his ribs. The sight of Dugan—alive, arrogant, and building atop the ashes–was a sickness in his gut. He needed a plan for a way to slip past the manor guards and wring the truth from that red-clad throat.
As he moved through a dense stand of blackened birch, a sharp snap of a dry branch shattered the silence. Emcorae spun, the Azora Katana clearing its scabbard by three inches in a blur of silver. His eyes were wild, predatory. But the figure stumbling out from behind the brush was no soldier.
It was Tiffania, Lynsy’s maid and best friend. Like the first time when they’d met earlier, Emcorae could see the girl had been crying. When she saw him, the maid fell to her knees in a fit of more intense sobbing. “Emcorae?” she whispered. “Is it… are you a ghost too?”
Tiffania told him the harrowing story of their ordeal—revealing that Lynsy hadn’t died in the fires when Kaoz burned Monthaven but instead that they’d been kidnapped and taken to Fubar. It was a whirlwind of a story – with Tiffania detailing their time in Orkney – Lynsy believing she’d be forced to marry Diked against her will, her thoughts of suicide, the subsequent change of heart by Diked and the incredible promise to send them back to Monthaven if Merrill paid a king’s ransom, and their preparations for returning home.
Emcorae listened in mounting confusion. When she reached the mention of the King’s ransom plot he interrupted, “It makes no sense, Tiff. If Diked wanted the Finch fortune, he would have married her. He could have tolerated a queen he didn’t love for the sake of the dowry and the inheritance. Why kidnap her? Why drag you to Fubar only to break the engagement?”
“Em, let me—”
“No,” he surged, pacing like a caged beast. “He went to the trouble of a winter’s captivity just to cast her aside? There is a piece missing. There is something—”
“Because Lynsy was pregnant!” Tiffania blurted out, the words erupting from her like a confession. “She was carrying your child, Emcorae!”
The world went still. For one heartbeat, a ghost of joy flickered in Emcorae’s chest, only to be instantly incinerated by the crushing reality of his loss. The news of a firstborn was no longer a blessing; it was a violent new wound, salt in the raw ache of his soul.
“Finish it,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, his face a mask of impotent fury. “Tell me everything.”
“The medics in Fubar found out,” Tiffania whispered, her voice trembling. “Diked couldn’t marry her—the timeline would have proven the child wasn’t his. To save face, he publicly branded her barren to justify breaking the contract. He kept us hidden all winter, then fed us the lie of a ‘ransom plot’ to make Lynsy believe she was going home. He never intended for her to return to you. He wouldn’t let you win.”
“So he led you into an ambush on the road,” Emcorae spat, the cold clarity of a nightmare finally locking into place.
Tiffania turned white. “Em… how could you know that?”
“I saw it,” he whispered, hanging his head in despair as the jagged pieces of his dreams finally fit the bloody truth. “I saw the massacre before the fires were even lit, but tell me the tale.”
“We were coming home,” she sobbed, describing a journey from Fubar that they believed was a miraculous return. “It was as if all our prayers had been answers. Lynsy was so happy… she talked of nothing but seeing you again”.
But the return was indeed a ruse. Tiffania detailed an “ambush” that occurred as they camped near the road to Skarra Bree. She realized now it was no surprise; Diked’s men had likely planned it all along, transporting them to a designated spot to do their dirty work.
“They attacked our caravan” Tiffania whispered, her face buried in her hands. “Diked was there too! He and that monster did terrible…things to Lnysy. The mutant… oh, Em, she tried to fight but…I don’t know how…she survived that…violence”.
Tiffania had tried to fight, to rescue her mistress, even striking the beast, but she was eventually beaten unconscious. When she woke, the escort guards were dead—slaughtered by monster to ensure their silence. She found Lynsy battered and bloody but alive and moaning in pain.
Emcorae was struck dumb, the air in his lungs turning to lead. After a hollow silence, Tiffania found the strength to continue, her voice trembling like a dying flame.
“I knew time was bleeding away from her, but I was powerless. I was lost, half-blind with exhaustion, and my own ribs were screaming from the beating I’d endured. Yet my mistress, my sister in all but blood, my Lynsy, she slipping away, and I couldn’t help her!” Tiffania gasped, a jagged sob catching in her throat. “I tried to lift her, to carry her toward some hope of help, but the fever of pain took me. I didn’t have the strength. After only a few paces, the world went dark. When I woke…” She choked on the words, her eyes wide and haunted. “I realized the air had gone still. She wasn’t breathing, Em. I failed her. I sat there in the dirt and I wailed until my throat was raw, gushing with a torment I can’t describe. How could the gods let this happen?”
“It’s over now, Tiff,” Emcorae murmured, though his own heart felt like a shattered hull. He reached out to support her, but his mind was already frantically clawing for some fragment of his lost love to hold onto. “Tiff…” he started breathlessly, his hand reflexively clenching the medallion of Lynsy’s hair at his throat. “Did you… was there a chance to save her locket?”
Tiffania flinched at the question, the meaning hitting her like a physical blow. She saw him clutching the lock of hair, and a deep, shameful crimson flooded her pale cheeks. “Oh, Em, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think! I was a fool, a mindless, selfish fool! I should have taken it from her—she would have wanted you to have it!” She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with fresh guilt.
Emcorae moved quickly to comfort her, pulling her into a fierce, protective hollow. “No, no—shh, Tiff. It’s alright. Truly. That locket wouldn’t have brought her back from the veil anyway. Don’t torture yourself; I still have the token she gave me.” He took a shuddering breath, trying to steer them both away from the precipice of madness. “Please… tell me how you found your way back to Monthaven.”
Wiping the salt from her cheeks, Tiffania looked out at the blackened trees. “It is all a hazy, fractured dream now. After I tried to move her, after I covered her as best I could, I wandered into the woods. I remember an omen—a tree where an oak and a birch seemed to grow from a single heart. Perhaps it was a delirium, perhaps a sign. Beyond it, I spied a small farmhouse. I ran for the hovel with the last of my life, and thank Mannah, a kindly couple lived there. I remember nothing after that until I woke days later in a warm bed. Phileme, the wife, had nursed my wounds with a mother’s mercy.”
She paused, her gaze hardening. “As soon as I could stand, I intended to go back for her.”
“And she was gone, wasn’t she?” Emcorae interjected, his voice flat and bitter. “The old man had cleaned the site. He likely burned everything he found. That fool… he put her to the flames. But what if Lynsy was somehow still…alive?”
Tiffania’s eyes snapped to his, wide with shock. “What? No! Emcorae, I tell you, there was no breath in her when I left. She was cold. She was dead.” She paused, a confused frown creasing her brow. “But… how did you know that Baukus went back to the camp?”
“My dream,” Emcorae replied, the frustration boiling over. “I don’t know what was real and what was a haunting, Tiff! In the vision, I heard screams. Perhaps the timing was skewed by my own madness, or perhaps the gods were mocking me with hallucinations. It doesn’t matter now. I saw the bodies burning. My Lynsy.”
Tiffania reached out then, her hand steadying his trembling arm. “Do not harbor venom for Baukus. He is a man of grace. He told me that when I arrived, before I fainted, I spoke of the slaughter. Despite his years, he went to that place of evil to cleanse it. He built a pyre to save their souls from further desecration. He told me everyone there was lifeless, Em.”
“Enough. I understand,” Emcorae said, holding up a hand to stem the flow of images. “Thank you for the truth of it, Tiff. But how long have you been back? How did you return?”
“Scarcely a week,” she answered. “Baukus and Phileme brought me in their wagon when the spring rains broke. I wish you could have met them, but they departed only two days past.”
Emcorae nodded absently, considering for a fleeting moment leaping onto Joanne and chasing the wagon to cross-examine the old man’s reality against his own nightmares. But the impulse died; he had a more immediate ghost to settle.
Looking at the scaffolding rising over the Finch manor, he asked, his voice turning cold and sharp, “With Merrill gone, what becomes of this place? Is Dugan the new master of the house?”
At the mention of Dugan, Tiffania recoiled as if struck, her face draining of all color.
“He inherited everything, Em,” she spat, her voice trembling with a mix of loathing and terror. “He is the master now. And he is terrified of you. He told me you abandoned us and stayed in Arbola. I knew it wasn’t true!”
Emcorae went cold. “I knew he never liked me but why fear me? I have no claim to his wealth.”
“I should have stayed with Baukus and Phileme,” Tiffania whispered, glancing frantically toward the scaffolding of the manor. “Dugan has lost his mind. He told me I can only stay if I agree to be his wife. I’m only humoring the fool until Darril and I can flee for Sylvania at week’s end.”
Emcorae felt a flicker of hope for his friend, but it was quickly extinguished by the growing shadow in Tiffania’s eyes. “Tiff, what aren’t you telling me?”
She hurried him further into the woods, far away from the outer walls of the estaate, her breath coming now in panicked gasps. Pulling him under the cover of the orchard, she gripped his cloak. “Promise me you won’t go after him, Em. He has fifty men-at-arms now. You can’t face them alone.”
“Tell me,” Emcorae hissed, his patience snapping. “What did Dugan do?”
Tiffania’s voice was a ghost of a whisper. “He was jealous, Em. Jealous of you, of the way Merrill thought of you, of the life we were four were all planning together. He confessed it to me in a fit of guilt. Last fall, he wrote a letter to King Diked. He told the King everything—about you and Lynsy. He invited that monster back to this valley just to get you out of his way.” She choked on a sob. “Dugan’s letter brought the fires! He is the reason Merrill and Lynsy and… your baby are dead!”
The world turned red. “I’m going to kill him,” Emcorae surged, his voice a low, guttural promise.
“Emcorae, no!” Tiffania hissed, clutching at his arm. “It won’t bring Lynsy back!”
He threw her off with a strength born of pure rage.He didn’t need a plan. He raced toward the manor, a silver-clad bolt of vengeance, with only one thought burning in his mind: to feel Dugan’s throat collapse beneath his hands.
Watching from afar, in upper boughs of a tall oak, Nathily watched this scene unfold. She saw Tiffania fall back and Emcorae sprint toward the house like a wolf scenting blood. She could not hear the words, but she saw the collapse of the woman and the terrifying change in Emcorae. She looked past them toward the skeletal manor, the place where Emcorae’s lover had once lived. A wave of empathy washed over her. She didn’t feel jealousy; she felt a crushing sadness for the young man who had once walked these gardens with a different love. But the “man” was gone. Emcorae moved now like an executioner. Nathily’s hand went to her falchia and she quickly moved back down the branches.
“He’s going to kill him,” she whispered. “He’s going to walk into that house and murder some one.” If Emcorae was descending into the abyss, she had to try to stop him.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 