Location: Pennal to Orkney
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Summer
Violence is a symphony, and as I write these lines I’m relishing Emcorae’s descent into the dark side. For mortals – whose lifespans are but a breath – there is a precise moment when the soul of a man ceases to be a garden and becomes a wasteland. El-Janus and his ilk speak of such times as the tragic fulfillment of his earlier warning: ‘He who seeks revenge must dig two graves.’ But from my vantage point, Emcorae’s desire for murder was an exquisite metamorphosis. Even better was the fact that he was assisted in his cruel quest by his so-called patron goddess – she proved again to be a cruel mother – sacrificing her pawn’s psyche in exchange for furthering her own designs.
The Path to Ruin
Nathily descended from her perch in the trees with the fluid grace of a panther, her boots making no sound on the forest floor. She stayed low and out of sight, weaving through the silhouettes of the trees on the perimeter as she watched Emcorae break away from Tiffania’s desperate grasp and storm toward the Finch manor house. She knew had to be ready – if Emcorae stepped into a trap, she would be ready to save him – even if he meant she had to sacrifice her own life.
As she drew closer to the walls, her Azora senses began to scream. Earlier, the estate had been a hive of activity—the rhythmic thwack of hammers, the shouting of foremen, the constant bustle of servants. Now, the silence was a sign – something wasn’t right. She noted how the perimeter guards were not at their posts, but the gate was unbarred. And then a flock of crows, usually bold scavengers at the construction site, had taken flight and were circling high above, sensing the shift in the air. This wasn’t a deserted site; it was a baited cage.
As Emcorae boldly vaulted the rear wall, Nathily ghosted through the orchards. She found a large apple tree the spanned the gate, climbed over, and then made her way through more fruit trees until she found one whose branches gave her an unobstructed view into the front of the manor house. She climbed into her vantage point with ease, her falchia drawn and gleaming with a cold, pale light. From here, she had a perfect line of sight into the heart of the main house that was still under repair from Kaoz’ assault.
Meanwhile Emcorae was a force of nature. The rage Tiffania’s tale had ignited within him was like a blinding sun, scorching away the tactical caution of his Azora training. He didn’t sneak; he marched. He beat a bold path across the lawn, his boots trampling the delicate primroses and lilies that Dugan’s servants had planted to mask the lingering scent of ash. He passed the stone bench where he and Lynsy had whispered of the future; he passed the trellis where they had first kissed. To Emcorae, these were no longer landmarks of love, but the debris of a life that had been stolen.
He reached the back door—the very threshold where Lynsy had once emerged, radiant and smiling, to meet him for the first time. With a snarl, he delivered a kick that shattered the new oak frame, sending the brass latch skittering across the stone floor like a discarded coin.
“Dugan!” Emcorae’s voice echoed in the halls. “Show yourself, you cur! Answer for what you’ve done!”
The house was eerily still. For a moment, Emcorae wondered if the coward had fled to a secondary lodge. But then, the instincts carved into his soul by the Amorosi took hold. He smelled the smoke of a kitchen fire and the heavy scent of roasting venison. He saw the candles in the hallway, guttering in a draft that shouldn’t exist. Then, the unmistakable clink of weapons from the foyer.
They know I’m here. Instead of fear, a sinister grin spread across his face. He stepped into the foyer, navigating around piles of lumber and bags of miscellaneous materials. The room was silent for a heartbeat, but then, from the upstairs gallery, Dugan appeared.
His crimson doublet gleamed like fresh-spilled blood against the pale, unpainted wood of the balcony. “You always were a fool, Emcorae,” Dugan said, his voice high and brittle, struggling to maintain a veneer of noble detachment. “Can’t you see? There’s nothing for you here, boy. Your sorry old life is ash. Be gone!”
Emcorae looked up through veiled lids. He saw the way Dugan’s knuckles were white as bone against the railing. He saw the dozen guards flanking him. His hand went to the hilt of his katana, but he remained still.
“I don’t want my old life, Dugan,” Emcorae hissed, the sound carrying like the strike of a snake. “I want yours.”
“I think not,” Dugan barked, a desperate laugh escaping him. “King Diked would pay dearly to meet the wanna-be elf warrior who thinks he can thwart his crown. Guards! Take him to the cellar. Break his legs if you must.”
The guards moved, but they were not the iron-willed soldiers of a king. They were townsfolk and house-guards, men who had shared tankards with Alfranco and watched Emcorae’s romance with Lynsy with a quiet, local pride. They looked at Emcorae—the silver armor, the terrifying intensity in his eyes—and they saw a hero of their own class of people, not a prisoner for rich nobles.
“Stay back,” Emcorae warned, dropping into the Crouching Wolf stance. “I have no quarrel with men of the valley. My business is with the rat on the stairs.”
“Do it!” Dugan shrieked, his face a blotchy purple. “He is one man! Strike him down!”
A young guard, desperate to prove his worth and feed his own hungry family, lunged with a spear. Emcorae didn’t draw. He pivoted with the speed of a lightning strike, catching the shaft and driving it into the floor. In a fluid motion, he then stepped inside the attacker’s guard and delivered a palm-strike to the chest that sent the man flying into his comrades.
Then, the steel sang. The Azora Katana cleared the scabbard, a sliver of moonlight in the dusty, half-finished hall.
“Is this the best you can buy with Lynsy’s inheritance, Dugan?”
In the blur that followed, Emcorae was a roaring flame. He parried heavy broadswords with disdainful flicks, shearing spearheads from their shafts and disarming hilts with terrifying precision. He wasn’t killing; he was instead purposely toying with them, relishing in the power he felt in his skills, knowing that all his training at The Glade of Gazza had given him the ability to defeat all those who stood before him. But even as they came for him, he sensed their unwillingness to fight – so he continued to disarm them and not injure them. The guards, realizing they were outmatched and lacking motivation, began to “fail” with theatrical clumsiness. A veteran guard purposefully tripped over a rug, taking two others down.
“He’s too fast!” the man shouted from the floor, making no effort to rise.
Whilst all this was happening, Nathily watched from her perch in the tree outside. Her breath was hitched in her throat, her eyes tracking every flash of silver steel within the house. When the guards had first attacked she had almost launched herself from the tree and raced towards the house, but as she watched Emcorae move—as she saw the fluid, effortless perfection of his defense—she froze.
“He doesn’t need me,” she realized, a pang of bittersweet pride stinging her heart. “The Path is working though him. Those men no match.”
She saw the guards’ hesitation, the way they looked at Emcorae. She stayed her hand, sinking back into the darkness of the trees. To reveal herself now would be to forfeit her only advantage. She would be his silent guardian, the shadow he didn’t know he had.
Eventually, Emcorae stood in the center of the debris, surrounded by groaning men and shattered wood. He looked up at Dugan, who was now backed against the wall, his tunic soaked in the sweat of pure, unadulterated horror.
“You are mine, Dugan,” Emcorae averred, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet calm. “I could take your life now. But that would be too merciful.” He took a step forward, and Dugan flinched as if scorched by a brand. “Know this – no wall is high enough. I am the shadow in your corner, the creak in your floorboards. From this moment until the end, you belong to me. Sleep well if you can, Dugan. It will be the last time you close your eyes without seeing my face.”
Dugan’s face was a mask of madness as he watched Emcorae turn and walk out the way he had come, his silver plate echoing through the house.
As he exited the grounds, Nathily closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. “Alyssa, Mother of the Green, thank you for staying his hand. Thank you for keeping his soul from the final shadow. Let this be the end of his rage.”
Poor Nathily. She had not heard the words he threatened Dugan with. She did not see the darkness festering deeper in the center of Emcorae’s heart. She thought she saw a hero who had shown mercy; she did not realize she was watching a predator who had merely decided to hunt his prey slowly.
The Murder
The night was moonless, the sky a bruised expanse of obsidian that seemed to press down upon the valley of Monthaven. Emcorae sat in the hollow of a lightning-struck oak, watching the Finch estate. He was not resting. He was not waiting. Instead he was…shedding. He felt the goodness within him like a restrictive skin—the memories of his grandmother’s pride, the warmth of this home, the goodness of the Amorosi and his friendship with Nathily, and the soft, silver laughter of his lost love Lynsy. One by one, he took these memories and cast them into the mental pyre he had been stoking since Kaoz’ destruction.
“If I do this,” his conscience whispered, a faint, dying ember, “there is no return. You will never be an Azora. You will become the hunted – a murderer. You will have no future. And aloud he reminded himself, “My future is in the grave with Lynsy.”
He gripped the hilt of the katana. The steel felt cold, a chill that seeped into his marrow, numbing the pain of his conscience until there was only the steady, rhythmic pulse of his vendetta. It was time – he climbed down from the tree; his movements were no longer human; they were the calculated motions of a predator. He was no longer a man seeking justice; he was the justice.
Back in her own camp, Nathily sat huddled near a small spring. She had intended to keep watch, to be the silent guardian of Emcorae’s soul. But a strange, unnatural lethargy had begun to seep into her limbs earlier that night. The air around the spring smelled of crushed violets and ancient moss—the scent of Alyssa’s deep-wood magic.
“Just a moment,” Nathily whispered, her eyelids feeling as heavy as leaden coins. “I must… stay awake. He is… in danger…”
But the Goddess Alyssa would not be denied. She needed Emcorae to make a descent into darkness if he was going to be the ‘champion’ of her cause in the game of the gods. To fulfill her plans, the “Shadow” had to be fully born, unhindered by the goodness of the light. She knew that Nathily would try to stop Emcorae’s murderous intentions, therefore she made sure the elfess would not be in a position to do so.
A soft, shimmering mist rose from the water, wrapping around Nathily like a mother’s shroud. The well-intentioned elfess’ head lolled against the bark of a willow, and she fell into a sleep so profound that the thundering of a thousand horses would not have stirred her. The pieces she would pick up later would be shattered beyond her recognition and would damage her psyche and her heart. Alyssa knew that Nathily would suffer, and for a brief moment this gave the deity pause – for Nathily was special to Alyssa in a way that few knew about. Even still, Alyssa’s own desires trumped those of her offspring and therefore she accepted that Nathily would suffer a bit too. There was no other way.
And so, with Nathily incapacitated, the elfess never watched as Emcorae approached the Finch manor for the final time.
The estate was ablaze with torches, a frantic, flickering defense against the dark. The guards Dugan had posted watched from the shadows as the grey-cloaked phantom approached. They well remembered the beating Emcorae had doled out to them a day earlier. When Emcorae neared them, one of them raised a staff, but his hands shook so violently the tip rattled against the stone.
“Don’t,” Emcorae said. The word wasn’t a threat; it was a statement of fact.
The trembling guards stepped aside – recoiling from the coldness that radiated from him. They had seen the “mercy” he showed the day before, but they sensed that tonight, there was no mercy in store for any who stood in the warrior’s wary. They watched in paralyzed silence as the dead carpenter’s son walked through the shattered front doors and into the half-rebuilt house.
In fact, nobody dared to stop Emcorae as he made his way through the manor. And nobody even dared to sound an alarm. Unfettered, Emcorae continued on his path. The stairs did not creak beneath his boots and the shadows seemed to elongate to meet him, pulling him toward the rebuilt master suite where Dugan lay.
The corridor leading to the master suite felt less like a hallway and more like a tunnel into a crypt. The new wood, white and innocent from it’s curing only only days ago, had soaked up the midnight gloom, turning a necrotic purple. Emcorae moved through it with a purposeful tread; the floorboards, recently prone to the groans of settling timber, remained as silent as the grave he was digging.
As he reached the threshold of Dugan’s chamber, the air shimmered as if with the psychic resistance of a soul under siege. That’s when Azora’s conscience made its final stand. It did not speak in his own voice, but in the echoes of those who had shaped the foundations of his life.
First came Beckali, his mother. “Em, put the steel down,” the phantom whispered. “What happened to my boy with the puppy dow eyes?
Emcorae did not blink. He stepped through his mother’s shade.
Then came his father – Alboris appeared in the corner of his vision, no longer the wiry carpenter, but a weeping old man. Teree and Pallina followed, their faces flickering in the guttering candlelight of the hall, their spectral forms barred across his path like a living fence. All reached out with translucent fingers, trying to catch the hem of his cloak, to anchor him to the boy who had once loved the world.
“Turn back, little wolf,” they pleaded in a chorus of dry leaves. “This is not the Road. This is the Void.”
He walked through them as if they were smoke, the coldness in his veins freezing their ethereal touch.
At the very door of the newly rebuilt master suite, the shadows coalesced and the air hummed with a celestial frequency. A vision of Mannah, the Son of the Great Creator, materialized before the latch. The beloved deity of the faith in which Emcorae had been raised – the god who had repeatedly laid down his life to save others now stood there before Emcorae, His eyes reflecting the infinite peace of the Heavens as he offered a silent, final bridge back to the light.
Emcorae looked into the eyes of the God-Son and for a moment he saw his grandmother Pallina behind the divinity too – the woman who had taught Emorae all his prayers and who’d hoped beyond hope that Emcorae might even take up the cloth himself when he was older. Pallina had prayed for Emcorae every day of his life and now she was there again – her ghost trying one last time to save him.
Emcorae paused as he stood before Mannan and Pallina’s spirit. “Gram…I…” He stammered. “Can’t.” And he waved a hand to drive the spirits away. “It’s are too late,” Emcorae sighed.
The visions of Mannah and Pallina faded with a sound like a long, mournful sigh, leaving the hallway colder and darker than it had ever been. The light had officially abandoned the carpenter’s son and it was delicious to behold.
Having passed the final ‘test’ Emcorae placed his hand on the door to Dugan’s room. He didn’t even had to put his ear to the door to hear the muffled, frantic breathing of a man who knew he was being hunted. Emcorae pushed the door open and stepped quietly over the threshold.
Inside the room, Dugan was not asleep. He was sitting upright in bed, a dagger clutched in his trembling hand, staring at the door. When it swung open, he didn’t scream. “You’re late,” The heir wheezed, his face a ghostly mask of sweat and pallor.
Emcorae didn’t answer. He approached the bed with deliberate slowness. He didn’t draw his sword. Instead, he reached into his belt and pulled out the warped, blackened chisel head he had recovered from his father’s burnt out workshop.
“This was my father’s,” Emcorae said, his voice flat, hollow. “He used it to shape many of the homes of this valley. To build things that lasted. But your letter and your lies burn it all down.”
The murder was not quick. It was a slow, methodical, ghastly thing. Emcorae did unspeakable things with Alboris’ chisel – macabre acts the tool was never intended to perform. Dugan never had a chance to resist – his terror incapacitating him. Towards the end, Emcorae watched the light fade from his enemy’s eyes, not with joy, but with a clinical detachment. As Dugan’s pulse flickered out, Emcorae felt the final tether to his own humanity snap.
When it was over the former Azora didn’t leave the scene of his crime immediately. He stayed in the room as the candles began to gutter and took the crimson doublet Dugan had been so proud of and laid it over the cooling body like a shroud of shame. Then, he took a piece of charcoal from the hearth and wrote a single word on the white plaster of the wall: FOR LYNSY.
When Emcorae eventually emerged from the manor, the first grey light of dawn was beginning to touch the horizon. He walked past the guards, who were now huddled together like frightened sheep. He didn’t look at them. Nor did he look towards the rear gardens where he’d planned out his life with Lynsy. Those times were long gone.
After hopping over the wall, he walked toward the ravine where Joanne waited. The elven mare let out a low, mournful nicker as he approached. She smelled the blood. She smelled the change. But Emcorae ignored his friend’s protests and climbed into the saddle, his movements heavy and laden with the weight of that “second grave.” He’d had his first revenge. He’d had his first justice. He taken the life of his first enemy. And in exchange, the boy who loved life, his family, and Lynsy Finch was now dead, replaced by a specter who now wanted his next taste of darkness – for this was only the start of the terror Emcorae planned to unleash upon his rivals.
Further away, the mist around Nathily began to dissipate. She stirred, a sudden, sharp gasp escaping her lips as the weight of her failure hit her. She looked far off towards the manor, seeing the smoke of the dying torches and the bustling of the servants who appeared to be in a panic. Nathily knew—with a soul-crushing certainty—that something terrible had happened.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 