《Dawnshadow》


 Prologue

    It has been 367 years since the founding of the Trotzen capital at Eragdush.


    For nearly four centuries, the Trotzen had steadily expanded their influence across the world of Serinor. Their outward march proved unstoppable, even when opposed by the might of the ancient dragons that had long called the fledgling world their home. Though hundreds of orcs might die to destroy a single hatchery, the relative loss to the dragons was far greater.


    Until the dragons discovered how to create wyrmkin.


    The tides turned almost overnight. Driven back to their swampy homeland, the Trotzen faced both dragons at the gates and traitors in their midst. But one orc, Gretchen Hilgard, whose name will ring in the Song for centuries, harnessed the raw, arcane energies dormant throughout Serinor for the first time in history to unite the orcs and ravage the dragons.


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    It will forever be known as the Arcane Dawn.


    But dawn casts a shadow. Syn, the Eternal Nightmare, god of darkness and destruction, had given its blessing to the Trotzen and aided them against its own monstrous children. The Dawn has come, but so has Syn, and tribute is due. The very orc that Syn had blessed must fight for life, for sanity, for a place in history, or fade forever into the shadowy void of oblivion.


    This is the story of the Dawnshadow.

 Like You Always Say 1

    The shadows cling, and silence deafens all


    While time arrested halts its endless flow.


    There is no wait because the wait can''t end.


    How long? Forever. Never. Evermore.


    Then one by one at last the lights appear,


    Opening like eyes amidst the gloom,


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    And suddenly the darkness seems a friend


    Amidst infinity''s cold, mirthless glare.


    Time jolts. It starts. Stops. Stutters. When is here?


    How did the Void become a trusted peer?


    When darkest laughter pounds against the ear


    The old, familiar words again ring clear:


    You were never a very good orc.

 A Sunless Breakfast 1

    Sai led his raptor into the egg chamber, no doubt following the smell of sizzling meat. The building, long ago abandoned by its draconic inhabitants, was still in good repair. Its yellowish limestone blocks, their colorful paint long ago faded, remained smooth and clean. The same could not be said for the surrounding ruins outside. "Good morning!" he called to Coatl-ome.


    The bipedal golden lizard did not look up from the stone stove where she was working. "There''s no sun here, Wulfgar," she told the orc.


    "Are you cooking breakfast?" Sai asked. "It smells delicious."


    Coatl-ome thrashed her heavy tail across the floor. "Yes," she answered. "For me."


    Sai took a seat on one of the wooden stools around the central table. His raptor, which he''d named Cuatete, stood at the place beside him, her scaly, fanged maw barely clearing the top of the low table. "What are we having?" he asked.


    Coatl-ome glared at them over her shoulder. She flicked her tongue at the orc. He looked more or less like what she remembered from outside the Vale. His green skin tended towards gray far more than orcs found attractive, and he wore his black hair longer and scragglier than the Horde ever found acceptable. Not that it had ever accepted the golden scales and draconic talon that had replaced the skin and hand of his left arm. At least he was shaving again. She hated it when he insisted on growing out his ridiculous excuse for facial hair. She returned to her work. "I," she emphasized, "am having braised nagi, marinated in whipped muck."


    "That," Sai said, "doesn''t sound nearly as appetizing as it smells."


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    "Well it''s not for you," Coatl-ome reminded him. "And there are very limited options for food here." She began plating the meal. She had long ago stopped questioning why there were orc-sized dishes in a draconic ruin.


    "Where is here, anyway?" Sai asked. "This looks like a draconic hatchery, but why would Syn put one here?"


    Coatl-ome set one of the plates in front of Sai and another before Cuatete before taking her own seat. The brown-and-tan raptor had gobbled up her entire steak before Coatl-ome sat down. "I believe it predates the Shadowed Vale," she said. She tore bits of meat off her marinated nagi steak and swallowed them whole. "From what I''ve seen, it used to span the entire northern half of this place, but it was destroyed when the mountains rose and the canyon opened."


    "Did it have a name?" Sai asked around a mouthful of nagi. Cuatete stared intently at his plate.


    "Not that I''ve been able to find in the surviving records," Coatl-ome said. And Nightmare knew she''d had plenty of time to search. "I''ve taken to calling it Chokiskuikatl."


    "What''s that?" Sai asked. "''Somber Tune?''"


    Coatl-ome blinked at him. "That''s a horrible translation," she said. "''Place of Mournful Melodies'' is much closer."


    Sai shrugged. "I like Somber Tune," he said. He tossed a bit of nagi to Cuatete, who snapped it out of the air.


    "Of course you do," Coatl-ome sighed.


    "But why call it that?" Sai asked. "Do you do much singing?"


    Coatl-ome looked at the door. "When the wind blows from the north, music wafts down from the mountains above us," she said. "It always sounds sad."


    "What''s up there?" Sai asked.


    "Nothing that I''ve ever seen," said Coatl-ome, shaking her head. "But the music always comes back."


    "Interesting," Sai said. He pushed back from the table. "Well, I''m off. Thanks for breakfast."


    Coatl-ome watched Sai and the raptor leave. "Thanked by a food thief," she muttered once they were gone. Then she speared the last of the meat with a talon and tossed it into her mouth. "I hate this place."

 Engulfing Darkness 1

    Sai gasped and started so violently that he knocked himself out of bed and fell to the floor. His heart pounded in his ears, racing from a nightmare he could not remember. He pushed himself to his knees and looked around in panic. The unfamiliar stones of the windowless walls pressed in around him, and a lone torch that cast no shadows sputtered in a crooked brazier on the wall. He could feel the chill of the bare floor through the thin, blue blanket that had fallen with him. Goosebumps prickled the green skin of his good arm. "What¡­" he said. "Where am I?"


    A dark laughter rolled through the room. "Your disorientation never ceases to amuse me."


    "Syn!" Sai shouted. "Where have you taken me?" He pushed himself to his feet and glared, naked, into each corner of the room, searching for the shadow from which the voice spoke. Behind him sat his bare cot, and across the room, a spiral staircase descended to the floor below. But he could see no shadows. "Syn?"


    The familiar voice came again, speaking from everywhere and nowhere. "In thanks for all the service you did me, I have brought you to my realm, this Shadowed Vale, where you will remain for eternity among my children."


    Sai gazed into the orange flames of the torch on the wall. It did not seem to be casting light, but it bathed the entire room in a dim, almost purplish glow that made the uneven stones look bruised. "Your children are monsters and nightmares," he said.


    "And you will fit right in," Syn replied. "They''re so looking forward to eating you."


    "I''m sure they are," said Sai. With a last frown at the torch, he turned his attention to the stairwell. The unhealthy light extended below to where the staircase turned out of his sight. "Do you expect me to just stay up here forever?"


    "No," Syn said. "I expect you to try to escape. Your fellow monsters would be distraught if they were not given the chance to tear you limb from limb a time or two."


    Sai took a step back from the stairs. He ran a hand over the golden scales of his left arm. They still gleamed in the not-light. "And what if I do just stay up here?"


    "Then I shall enjoy watching your sanity bleed away over the course of centuries," said Syn. The Eternal Nightmare''s mirthless laugh rolled again through the room. "Should you decide to try your luck outside your cell, I''ve left you a means to defend yourself in the footlocker there."


    "You what?" Sai asked. He looked around the room again and spotted a rotting chest at the foot of the cot that he was nearly certain had not been there before. "Why would you help me?"


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    "To coax you out to where you can be crushed," Syn answered. "Why else?"


    Sai sighed. "I don''t know what other answer I was expecting," he said, mostly to himself. He took a moment to look around the room again, closer this time. The walls, floor, and ceiling all seemed to be made of the same rough stone. His cot sat against the wall opposite the stairs, its threadbare blue blanket half draped onto the floor. The torch cast its light from a crude iron brazier on the wall. Beneath the torch lay the shattered wreckage of what seemed to once have been a dresser. In another corner was a single, stained pot. And there, still at the foot of the cot, was the footlocker.


    Sai rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "This is a trap," he said to himself. He paused, waiting for a response from Syn, but there was only silence. He lowered his hand to his mouth and stared at the footlocker. Then he stared at the stairwell and then down at his naked body. Finally, he stared into the draconic talons that had once been his left hand. He flexed them, open and shut, several times. "There might be wyrmkin down there," he muttered. He opened his talon. "They''re children of Syn." The talon closed. "I''m just as likely to run into a werewolf or bogling, though." It opened. "But I have to survive." And closed. "Survival''s always been enough before."


    With a sigh and a shrug, Sai crossed the small room and gave the footlocker a cautious kick. The rotten side boards disintegrated. Sai grunted in surprise and knelt to look inside. He pushed aside the broken boards and fished out a simple backpack of the style given to all grunts in the Trotzen Horde. He held it at arm''s length and stared at it, frowning. He recognized every scuff and every scratch in the brown leather of the pack. But it couldn''t actually be his. Right?


    Still frowning, Sai set down the pack and opened it up. Inside were his journal, his charcoals, his tunic, and a rough chunk of flint. He ran one of his fingers over the spine of his journal before pulling out his tunic. It was stained and gray from overuse, its lower hem frayed so far up that he would almost still be naked from the waist down. "This is the same tunic I wore in the desert," he said. "After Drang and I fled the fall of Fort Vrarag." He shook his head to clear away the memories and pulled the tunic over his head. Its belt was missing.


    Next he pulled out the flint. "I don''t recognize this," he said. Then he blinked. "Wait. Is this what you expect me to fight with?" he asked the air. "A rock? Really? A rock?"


    "I am the Eternal Nightmare," the air replied. "Did you expect a pleasant imprisonment?"


    "Fine," Sai said. "When I die, it''s on your hands."


    Syn chuckled. "I look forward to it."


    Sai set down the rock and pulled out his journal. He sighed. Just touching the well-worn leather of its binding made him feel better. He opened to the first page and smiled at his own handwriting. "The Research Notes of Gert ''Sai'' Wulfgar," he read. He traced the fading lines of the stylized sun he''d drawn as his personal symbol. "I''ve brought the sun into Syn''s shadows," he said. "I''m going to get out of here." Then he dug one of his charcoals out of the pack, flipped to the next open page, and began to write.

 Sais Journal 1

    Syn has taken me. I can''t seem to remember when or how. But here I am.


    Though part of me knew this was coming from the day Syn chose me, I do not plan to die here. I have to survive long enough to get out of this prison. No matter the cost.


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    I''ll never survive in this place alone, though. Syn is surely counting on that fact. But Syn said this place is full of its children. That might include wyrmkin. If I can find a roaming wyrmkin, I should be able to shackle its mind and force it to serve me. I didn''t give up my arm to gain the psychic strength of the dragons only to lose it now.


    I hope.

 Engulfing Darkness 2

    Sai knew that the raptor could see him. It stood at the center of the chamber, watching Sai through the open arch. It crouched on its hind legs, standing just over a meter tall. The dark brown of its scaled back lightened to tan along its underbelly. The two curved claws on its taloned feet surpassed the serrated fangs protruding from its closed maw in intimidating lethality. But even more frightening were its dark eyes. The raptors were not intelligent in the way their fellow bipeds, the lizards, were intelligent, but they were crafty and vicious, and Sai always felt he could almost see their reptilian brains working out the best way to eviscerate him through the fathomless shadows of their eyes.


    Behind the raptor was another staircase leading down, the only one Sai had found during his exploration of the floor below the tower with his cell. The orc leaned side to side. The raptor tracked his movement without making a sound. "Why aren''t you attacking me?" Sai asked it, rapping the makeshift cudgel he''d made from his flint and a rotting spear shaft against his thigh. "And why would Syn use wyrmkin as guards? I thought it was trying to kill me, not give me pets."


    With a sigh, Sai stepped through the arch and into the raptor''s room. It began to growl. Sai tightened his grip on his cudgel. That the draconic blood flowing through his veins let him shackle the minds of lesser wyrmkin did not mean that they would accept enslavement without a fight. Sai raised his scaled arm and pointed a golden talon at the wyrmkin sentinel. "Obey," he said, casting out the psychic shackles the dragons used to command their pets. To his surprise, he felt the simple command almost find its purchase on the raptor''s mind before, at the very last moment, slipping free.


    The raptor did not wait for Sai to overcome his surprise. With a tooth-shaking screech, it leapt at him, preparing a taloned kick that would rip the orc''s stomach clean open. But this was not Sai''s first fight with a raptor. The orc spun by reflex, catching the kick with his fleshy right arm. He roared as the raptor''s claws tore through his skin, but like the raptor had before him, he did not wait for his opponent to recover. He jabbed the claws of his left hand into the side of the raptor''s face, sending psychic knives through his arm and into its brain. It screeched again and tried to break free, but Sai held it fast. "Obey," he commanded again, and this time felt the shackles latch cleanly into place.


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    Sai jerked his claws free from the raptor''s face, and she took her place by his right side. Sai could feel the empty calm of the raptor''s mind through the shackles. The feeling was comforting and familiar. "Ahh, that''s better," he said. "I always feel better when I have a scaly death beast at my side." He reached out to pat her on the head and winced. The gash on his arm bled freely and painfully. With a grimace, Sai covered the wound with his taloned hand, closed his eyes, and tried to steady his breathing. He had never excelled at harnessing the dragons'' regenerative abilities, but he knew enough to knit a wound.


    By the time the bleeding had stopped, Sai''s head felt ready to split open from the exertion. He rubbed at his temple with his claw while he inspected his mended arm. It would be nearly impossible to pick out the scar from the new wound from the countless others already there. He went to wipe away the blood and realized his scaled hand was already coated in the stuff. Which meant it was also all over his face. He sighed and looked down at the raptor. He made her look back up at him. "This is your fault," he told her.


    She chirped back at him, a sound as cheerful as it was unexpected.


    Sai blinked at her. He hadn''t made her do that. He tried to search her mind for an actual response through the shackles, but all he felt was the familiar emptiness. His head began to throb even more painfully. "Okay," he said. "As much as I''d like to see what''s down those stairs, we should probably head back to my cell so I can get some rest." He rubbed his bloody claws on his bare thigh. "And maybe find somewhere to clean up." He sent the raptor out before him and followed along behind her.

 Before the Dawn 1

    14.3.373


    Grak is dead. That makes... was he the sixth? Might be the seventh. I''ve lost count. They never listen. No matter how many times you tell them to avoid the cages while cleaning or to keep their antivenom with them or just to not stand still when the subjects breathe fire.


    Good help is impossible to find.


    3.4.373


    Dragons one and three have chosen names for themselves: Tlaloc and Itzli, respectively. Dragon two insists on using her research designation as her name: Coatl-ome. She says that it is the name I gave her, so she will keep it forever to never forget what I have done to her.


    Note to self: stop letting flammable objects or orcs near Coatl-ome''s cage.


    32.5.373


    Tlaloc and Itzli have been very beneficial to my studies. They allow me to draw blood for analysis without a fight. Coatl-ome, however, continues to be recalcitrant. She lets nobody near her unsinged and makes up words just to confuse me. Like "sitlali," which seems to translate as something like "sky-light-night," which makes no sense. There are no lights in the sky at night. There is only the Void.


    6.6.373


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    Disaster! Everything is gone!


    My new assistant must have let Coatl-ome out of her cage. She roasted him, killed Tlaloc and Itzli, and smashed all the eggs in storage. All my research notes are gone. She must have taken them. I can recover, replace, and rebuild everything, but the missing notes make me nervous.


    12.8.373


    I have one last option.


    Drang and I deserted during the evacuation of Vrarag after the wyrmkin swarmed it. I have one vial of Coatl-ome''s blood left and little chance I''ll see more. Drang does not have my knack for survival, so I must perform the transfusion on myself. I''ll leave my notes with Drang so they will not be lost if I don''t survive.


    13.8.373


    I passed out from the pain of the transfusion, and in my sleep, I was visited by a dragon. It was black, unlike any other in Serinor. It was surrounded by wyrmkin of every size and shape. "My finest work," it said. "And all because of you. My Chosen."


    I woke with a splitting headache. But when I laughed in surprise that I was alive, the shadows laughed too. They are always watching.


    22.8.373


    The transfusion corrupted my left arm. The scales are as golden as Coatl-ome''s. Otherwise, the experiment was a success. I get better at shackling minor wyrmkin every day and can even command Drang. It''s exhausting, though the headaches from the attempts grow weaker as I grow stronger.


    I have never been strong before. It is odd.


    41.8.373


    I have reached the limit of what I can learn on my own in a cave at the edge of a desert. I must find new subjects and assistants


    The dragons used my research to create the wyrmkin. I must use my research to give the Trotzen the power to resist.  They will hate me, but they will survive. And survival''s always been enough before.

 Engulfing Darkness 3

    Sai could see leafy trees and actual green grass past the columned foyer at the base of the Citadel. He knew it had to be a trap because he had found no other way out. Heavy portcullises had blocked passage after passage as he made his way through the massive building, guiding him to this very foyer. The children of nightmare he''d encountered were some of the weakest of Syn''s children he''d ever seen. The shriveled goos, tiny bats, and emaciated boglings had been no match for his shackled raptor. Which meant that Syn was making no effort to keep him from escaping.


    The raptor growled. "I know," he told her. "But there''s no other way out. And I''m not going to die in here." He sent the raptor ahead and followed her out into the grassy courtyard. A stone wheelhouse flanked by large, open gates sat to the south, while the walls of the Citadel loomed around them on the other sides. Far above was the endless expanse of the Void, its infinite black marred by the countless points of Syn''s distant lights.


    Then the Eternal Nightmare''s voice sounded from above. "Going so soon?" At the center of the courtyard, the dark of the Void streamed down from the sky and coalesced into a vaguely humanoid shape huddled on the grass.


    "You!" Sai shouted.


    The shadowy figure stretched up from the ground. It didn''t seem to have legs on which to stand, instead consisting of a roiling mass of shifting shadows, too solid to be smoke but too translucent to be touchable. "Did you think it would be that easy?" Syn asked. Its voice did not come from its avatar.


    "I kind of hoped, yeah," said Sai, glancing around.


    "Ah, hope," Syn said. "Such a delicious emotion." Laughter rolled around the courtyard, coming from everywhere except the avatar of shadow. Something red darted through the form of its avatar and was gone. "You''re going to go back inside now, little orc."


    "And what if I refuse?" Sai asked. He brandished his cudgel, and the raptor growled.


    "What you do or do not do is meaningless," Syn answered. "I am the Eternal Nightmare, and you are mine."


    Sai sneered, flashing his one remaining tusk. "I do not belong to you, beast," he said.


    "Please," Syn said with a chuckle. "You know that you are shadowed and will always be so. Now. You are going to go back inside."


    "I don''t take orders from you," said Sai.


    "It was not an order," said Syn. "Simply a statement of fact." The shadows of the avatar compacted, and its form solidified into an impenetrable black. A massive, red-irised eye opened inside its head, glowing through its shadows. "You''re going back inside because I''m going to put you there."


    The raptor charged the avatar with her signature screech before Sai could even give her the order to do so. Sai bolted for the open gates to the south with the raptor''s assault playing in his head through the shackles. She slashed at Syn''s avatar, but her talons passed through it without resistance, her charge propelling her straight through its tenebrous body. The avatar''s eye pivoted in its head to follow her while a crimson tendril lanced from its back and towards the sky. It seemed to pluck a sword crafted from the same light as the distant points out of the Void itself. The raptor turned with a screech, preparing to charge again, but the arm and the sword fell almost faster than she could see. Sai felt only the jolt of the shackles shattering.


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    The orc grimaced and tried to run faster. He was so close to the gates. Just as he was about to pass through them, another bloodied tendril snaked in front of him and wrapped around his ankles, throwing him to the ground. He barely had time to grunt from the impact before the crimson tentacle flung him back across the courtyard. Sai tumbled through the air and slammed into the opposite wall with the sound of crunching bones. He cried out in pain as he landed in the grass. Sai pushed himself up to his knees while Syn laughed. The orc looked up at the avatar. The eye still glowed within its shadows, and it had sprouted even more arms, each shrouded in a crimson haze somewhere between blood and smoke. All but one bore a gleaming weapon. The last, held close to where the avatar''s chest would have been, clutched a small, guttering candle.


    "Back inside now, little orc," Syn said, and all the arms attacked.


    Sai gasped and started so violently that he knocked himself out of bed and fell to the floor. His heart pounded in his ears, racing from a nightmare he could not remember. He pushed himself to his knees and looked around in panic.


    "Oh, I do so enjoy killing you," said a shadowy voice around him.


    Sai blinked, and what had just happened began to come back to him as though through a dream. The courtyard. The avatar. The attack. He looked around the room, still gasping, but the avatar had was not there. "Is this how it''s going to be then?" he shouted. "You kill me whenever I step out of line?"


    To Sai''s surprise, Syn did not laugh. "I find it striking," said the Eternal Nightmare, "that you refuse to understand that you are trapped inside an unending nightmare. But fine. I will open the gates of my Citadel to you. You are free to wander where you will." Then, finally, it chuckled. "But then so are my stronger children."


    Sai frowned. "Why are you being nice to me?" he asked.


    "Didn''t I say?" replied Syn. "Hope is delicious." Sai sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "How was death, by the way?" Syn continued. "Everything you dreamed of?" Sai sighed again and covered his face. Syn laughed. "Suit yourself."


    Sai waited until the laughter died away. Syn said nothing more. "So that was awful," Sai said, lowering his hands. "But still¡­" He looked down at himself. He still wore his tunic, now belted with a golden, velvet rope he''d pulled from a set of drapes he''d found while wandering the Citadel. The crude cudgel he''d crafted dangled from a loop he''d made for it at his waist. His pack was still on his back. "I''m alive," he went on. "I have all my things. I don''t feel much worse than I did after some of the beatings I took during training with the Horde. It''s almost like it didn''t happen." He stared into his talon, flexing it open and closed. "Is this all I have to fear from death here? Nothing?" He snorted. "Some nightmare."


    But as his heartrate returned to normal and the adrenaline rush faded, the pain of Syn''s assault began to creep back into his bone and muscles. "Ugh," he groaned. "Still, though. Ow." He turned back to his cot. "I should get some rest. Dying really takes its toll." He dropped his pack and collapsed onto the cot. He felt himself drifting off even before he''d pulled the blanket over himself.


    <hr>

 Sais Journal 2

    I have been chosen by the Eternal Nightmare.


    This isn''t something I wanted, necessarily. But I was not opposed to accepting Syn''s help when it was the only way to get my experiments to work. Which, at its heart, was the only way I was going to survive. But now Syn taunts me. Always before survival was enough, but here the Eternal Nightmare can kill me whenever it pleases. It made that quite clear.


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    But even though I''ve died, I am not dead. Syn will not end my nightmare by letting me truly die. So maybe this is survival of another sort. Maybe it will be enough. Maybe.


    Survival''s always been enough before.

 Engulfing Darkness 4

    The brown-and-tan raptor was there again when he descended from his tower. She growled at his approach. "You again?" he asked. As before, she screeched and charged him, and also as before, he caught the attack with his right arm then lashed out at her with his psychic knives before shackling her mind. She waited at his side while he closed the wound on his arm. The headache this time, though, was very mild.


    Sai looked down at the raptor and made her look back at him. "I guess you''re stuck in this place too," he said. "What''d you do to deserve that?"


    "Grrr¡­" she said.


    "That was rhetorical," said Sai. "But seriously. You''re here again. And your mind resists the shackles far less than other wyrmkin." He frowned down at her. "What are you?"


    She cocked her head at him. "Skree?" she asked.


    Sai rubbed at his eyes. "And why am I talking to a raptor?" He sighed and shook his head. "Come on," he said, heading for the stairs. "Let''s see if we can get out now."


    Sai had expected there to be stronger nightmares on the floors below. Syn had told him they would be there, and the Eternal Nightmare had never given Sai cause to doubt its word. What Sai had not expected, however, were shadow cultists. He froze when he saw the first of them wandering the hallway just outside the stairwell. He could tell by its hands that it had once been an orc. Its hands, at least, still had the rich green skin of the eastern orcs. Syn had let it keep its eyes, too, though the orcish red of its irises now burned with the with the dying glow of a scattered fire. The rest of its head Syn had taken. Its eyes alone glowed from the shadows in the deep hood of the dull gray robe that covered the rest of its body.


    Sai''s raptor, fortunately, had not frozen. She charged the cultist with a screech before Sai could tear his gaze away from its burning eyes. The cultist''s wordless howl of pain jolted Sai back to his senses. He gripped his cudgel and darted past the raptor and the cultist. The cultist ignored him and, raising its free hand, conjured a jagged bolt of dusky shadow to stab the raptor in the face. She yelped through clenched teeth and did not open her jaws. The cultist raised its arm again, but Sai clouted it in the back of its hood. His blow crushed the hood as if it had been empty, connecting instead with the stump of the cultist''s neck. Without a sound, the cultist slumped to the floor. Its eyes bounced free. Sai waited for it to get back up, but it did not, and the glow faded from the fallen eyeballs just before the raptor ate them both.


    Sai watched his pet lick her jaws. Once she was done, she looked up at him and chirped. He shook his head. "Effective, I suppose," he said. "Come here. Let me look at you."


    "Chirp!" she said again, hopping to Sai''s side


    He took her jaw in his hand, bringing her injured maw close to his face. The bleeding from the cultist''s attack had already begun to slow. "It''s good you''re at least part draconic," he told her. "I can only mend my own wounds. Drawback of my power being stored in the blood." He watched her flesh begin to knit itself back together and fresh scales begin to grow. He frowned. "That seems fast, though. Especially for a raptor."


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    The raptor shook her face free of his grip and cocked her head at him. "Skree?" she asked.


    Sai looked around. How long had he been here? How much time had passed between when Syn had killed him and when he woke up? "Note to self," he said. "Find an objective, outside means to measure time." He paused. "Inside a dream." He sighed.


    A distant howl pulled him from his reverie. "Let''s go," he said. "It''s not far to the courtyard."


    Sai rushed through the hallways and down the stairs to the courtyard, the raptor following close on his heels. She almost bumped into him when he froze beneath the arches leading out of the citadel. The Avatar of Shadow was no longer there waiting for them. A minotaur was instead.


    "Ah," the monster said from where it crouched on the grass, resting his weight against the greatsword he had stabbed into the dirt. "Our Master told me to expect you."


    "A minotaur? Your kind is real?" Sai asked, inspecting the beast. The minotaur''s hunched pose made it difficult to gauge his height, but Sai estimated that the creature had to be at least three meters tall. His entire body was covered in short, brown fur, from his hooved feet and tufted tail to his orc-like and heavily-muscled torso and arms to his bovine head. He was only lightly armored, but the leather of his shin guards and abdominal bindings was dyed the color of the night sky just after dusk, and the metal of his thigh plates and single pauldron gleamed with the pale glow of Syn''s lights. "I''d only heard stories," Sai added.


    "Go back inside, little orc," said the minotaur. His tone caught Sai off-guard. Where Sai had expected threats or menace, the minotaur instead sounded almost bored. "Our Master has commanded that I not let you pass this way."


    "No," said Sai. "I''m coming through, and you can''t stop me." His raptor growled behind him.


    The minotaur shook his head and picked up a shield that had been lying on the ground beside him. It, too, glowed faintly, which was when Sai noticed that his sword did not. "I can," the minotaur said, "though it saddens me that I must." He reversed his grip on his sword, stood up to his full height, and yanked the sword from the ground. It was longer than Sai was tall, but the minotaur handled it with the same ease that Sai handled his makeshift cudgel.


    Sai''s raptor charged, but she barely came up to the monster''s knees, and he batted her away with a low sweep of his shield. She soared across the courtyard, slammed into the outside wall of the citadel, and was still. Sai tried to back away from the minotaur''s advance, but, in the manner of a nightmare, his feet would not move. The minotaur raised his sword, and in the moment before it fell, Sai was reminded of Gretchen. She swung her sword just like the minotaur.


    Sai gasped and started so violently that he knocked himself out of bed and fell to the floor. His heart pounded in his ears, racing from a nightmare he could not remember. He pushed himself to his knees and looked around in panic.


    "I see you''ve met my enforcer, Gugalan," said Syn''s voice.


    As before, Sai''s memories rushed back to him. He took a deep breath to try and slow his racing heart. "That thing has a name?" he asked.


    "Oh, indeed," Syn replied. "My most loyal servants earn names. And Gugalan is the most loyal of all. He hears nothing but my voice and is completely obedient." There was a brief pause. "I''ve ordered him not to let you through," Syn added.


    Sai nodded. "Great," he said. He grabbed his cudgel from where it had fallen beside him and pushed himself to his feet.


    "How was death, by the way?" Syn asked. "Everything you dreamed of?" Sai sighed and glared at the ceiling. Syn chuckled. "Suit yourself."

 Sais Journal 3

    I encountered a minotaur in the southern courtyard of the Shadowed Citadel. Syn called him its enforcer and said his name was Gugalan. I know that I am small, but that minotaur made me feel puny. Syn''s children are truly terrifying, and Gugalan even more frighteningly powerful. I can almost still feel the wound left by his titanic blade.


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    Syn mocked me after Gugalan killed me. Said his chosen enforcer is completely loyal and will answer to no voice but that of the Eternal Nightmare.


    Time was I spoke with Syn''s voice. If only I still did. I could order Gugalan to let me pass.

 Engulfing Darkness 5

    The raptor was still there when he descended from his tower. She growled at his approach. "You again?" he asked.


    He stared at her while he mended his arm after their now-familiar scuffle. "You again," he repeated. "And again and again and again. Even though you die, you show up again after I die too. Why are we linked?" With his wounds closed, he placed his scaled talon on her snout. "What are you?" She only growled at him, and he sighed. "Syn!" he shouted, but no response came. "Bah," he said, then shrugged. "Worth trying." He slid his hand under her jaw and lifted her gaze to his. "I never had a pet. Especially not a pet raptor."


    "Skree?" she asked.


    Sai''s eyes lost their focus. "Anitle doesn''t count," he said. "He wasn''t a pet. And if he were, he was Drang''s pet, not mine. So why is Syn giving me a pet now?" The raptor cocked her head at him, shaking loose Sai''s hand. The motion pulled him from his thoughts. "Don''t cock your head at me like that," he told her.


    "Chirp!" she said.


    "I can break you," Sai told her. "Don''t even tempt me. I can shatter your brain with the snap of my fingers." He demonstrated his ability to snap his fingers.


    "Grrr¡­" she said.


    "Fine," said Sai, tossing up his hands. "Fine! Let''s get moving. There has to be another way out of this place."


    Sai took them to the ground floor first. The northern wing there seemed to once have been servants'' quarters, the rooms packed with decaying beds and ransacked dressers, but now only Syn''s children lived there. One hallway along the northern wall of the citadel got Sai''s hopes up, but the room at the end had been converted into some sort of washroom, with empty wardrobes and dry basins all along the walls. What had once been windows and an exit were bricked over with the same bruised stone as the rest of the citadel. The raptor growled at the shape of the door in the wall. Sai sighed. "Let''s keep looking," he said.


    There was nothing else in the entire wing that gave any indication of being an exit. In one storage room towards the back of the area, though, sat an ornate chest, trimmed in gold and crimson. Unlike the crates and barrels along the walls around it, the chest was entirely free of dust and cobwebs. Sai considered it from the door. "That''s a trap," he said. Then he sighed, walked up to the chest, and popped open the lid.


    A shadow flew out of the chest. Sai cried out and tripped over backwards. The raptor was by his side before he hit the ground. The shadow darted towards his face, and Sai held up a hand to stop it. The shadow stopped, spinning instead in erratic orbits around Sai''s outstretched hand. "What is this?" Sai asked.


    "An errant fragment," came Syn''s voice from the corners. "Pay it no mind."


    "A fragment of¡­?" Sai began, but then he felt a familiar thrilling chill emanating from the fleeting shadow. "Oh. It''s a bit of you." Sai brought his hand closer to his face and watched the shadow swirl. The raptor sniffed at it, and Sai batted her gently away. "There was a time when I was your chosen one. I could command your children. Summon nightmares."


    "You were an excellent conduit for bringing monsters and destruction onto the Eldritch One''s pitiful world," Syn agreed. "And for your loyal service, I have brought you to your eternal reward."


    "But you''ve taken everything," Sai said. "I no longer speak with your voice. I''ve lost your shadows. So why would you give one back?"


    "Hope is a powerful motivator," Syn replied. "A beckoning light flickering amidst the darkness. And so delicious to snuff."


    Sai sighed. Then, as the shadow darted across his palm, Sai clenched his fist and caught it. "I can make something out of this," he said. "And I will use it to help break free of you."


    Syn laughed. "Delicious," it repeated. This time, Sai could tell when the god had departed. He scowled at his clenched fist. He had never joined the Cult of the Shadow. What would have been the point? He had been chosen by Syn directly, and he knew how to work with the Eternal Nightmare''s shadows. If Syn was going to give him tools, he was going to use them.


    His resolve began to fade when he realized he didn''t actually have anything into which he could infuse the shadow, and he could feel it fading within his grasp. In a brief moment of panic, he clapped the shadow to his stomach, hoping he could trap at least some of its essence within his tattered tunic. Instead, it flowed into the belt he''d scavenged. Though the belt''s physical appearance did not change, its golden velvet felt black when Sai looked at it.


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    Sai looked at his raptor, and she looked back at him. "I could have planned that better," he told her.


    "Grrr¡­" she said.


    "My cudgel is right there," Sai said. "But no. I had to shove the only loose fragment of Syn''s power I''m like to ever see again into my belt."


    "Chirp!" said the raptor.


    "It''s not even my belt," he went on. "It''s a curtain tie that I pulled off a wall." Sai shook his head. "Doesn''t matter. It''s done." He pushed himself to his feet. "Let''s check the south wing next."


    The south wing had even less in the way of potential exits. The small rooms and tight hallways were crammed full of desks and tables and workstations. Sai assumed the area must have been used as workshops of some sort, though he held out little hope of finding anything of use. So finding an alchemical formula in a book about keeping a clean castle came as quite the surprise. "Is this for a tool cleaner?" he asked the raptor while she guarded the door of the tiny library.


    "Skree?" she asked.


    "Yeah, I don''t know that I''d use turpentine for that either," Sai said.


    The next surprise came in the form of a second ornate chest in an empty alcove. It sat, as the other had, alone in the center of the floor. Sai shook his head. "This is getting ridiculous," he said, opening the chest. Inside was a single glass vial full of thick, red blood. He gasped. "This is wyrmsblood." He lifted the vial from the chest with his talon and swirled its contents. He could feel the power of it thrumming up through his scaled arm. "This is what gave me my power. What I used to give myself the mental strength of the dragons." His grip tightened. "And what corrupted my arm."


    Sai tucked the vial into his backpack, wrapping it in a scrap of fabric he''d torn from the robe of one of the shadow cultists. "I wonder if there''s a research lab in this place," he mused to his raptor. "Even just a small alchemy station. I could probably further enhance the draconic traits with more wyrmsblood." He chuckled. "Before I always thought the risk wasn''t worth it, but what could be worse than being stuck forever as a prisoner of the Eternal Nightmare?"


    "Grrr¡­" the raptor said.


    Sai winced. "Note to self," he said. "Don''t say things like that."


    It ended up being on the north side of the second floor of the citadel that Sai noticed a narrow side passage whose portcullis had been raised. "This looks promising," he muttered, but at the back was a staircase leading up to the floor above. Sai shook his head, sighed, and shrugged before climbing the stairs. At the top, a long hallway stretched farther north. Sai frowned. "Where can that possibly go?" he wondered. "That must go past the north wall of the citadel." He blinked. "It has to lead out of the citadel!"


    The raptor raced ahead of him as he charged down the corridor. At the far end, another stairwell led down into what gave every impression of being a kitchen. Beyond another open doorway was a large sleeping room with multiple beds. Nice ones too, with clean bedspreads and carved headboards. "It''s a guest house," Sai said. He peeked through another doorway into a drawing room, complete with tables and chairs and bookshelves. Everything felt clean and warm and inviting. Even the torches there cast real shadows, and the in the light the walls took their true deep gray shade. But what most caught his attention was the open doorway at the far end of the room. Or rather, the grass outside the doorway. He laughed and hurried to the exit, the raptor chirping behind him.


    But he stopped as soon as he stepped outside. "Whoa!" he cried, more for the raptor than himself. There was grass outside the door, but not much else. The ground dropped off into a gaping abyss less than two meters from the wall of the guest house. A narrow, grassy ledge hugged the wall for a while, but it too disappeared before it even reached the corner of the building. Sai crept along the wall to the edge of the cliff and looked down. Below was the black of the Void. As much as it disconcerted Sai to see the Void below rather than in the night sky above, even more worrisome were the lights in the darkness. The Void below was marred as the Void above by the uncountable pinpricks of light that were the hallmarks of the Eternal Nightmare.


    "Those lights¡­" Sai said. "This place really is Syn''s." He looked up into the sky, studying the lights there. "It''s like the stories Coatl-ome used to tell about the sitlali," he told the raptor. Sai smiled. "She would get so mad when I corrupted the Draconic word into a Trotzen derivation. ''Stars.''" He sighed, his smile fading. "Lights like that don''t belong in the sky. The Void should be black. Empty. Nothing good can come where there are lights in the darkness."


    The Void within the canyon laughed.


    Sai stepped back from the edge, staring down into the starry black. Then he looked out. The corridor they''d taken through the citadel had been a bridge across a canyon that stretched east and west as far as Sai could see. It had taken them from the citadel proper to the north rim of the canyon. Beyond the citadel to the south lay what appeared to be farmland, and beyond that was desert. Farther south still were the steep faces and snowless peaks of void mountains. Sai craned his head around; the void mountains loomed in every direction. "What did Syn call this place?" he asked.


    "Skree?" the raptor said.


    "The Shadowed Vale," Sai answered. "Shadowed Vale," he said again, clutching for a scrap of memory. He''d heard that name somewhere. Or had he read it? "No," he whispered, a fragment of melody finally returning to him:


    And so did Nilamaak raise up the plains


    Unto the coldest reaches of the Void,


    Thus trapping the Eternal Nightmare there


    Forevermore within the Shadowed Vale.


    "Belasolu sang about this place," Sai whispered. "The citadel isn''t the prison. The Vale is." Sai stood, staring into nothing, for some time. His thoughts rolled, but they too were dark. It took the raptor chirping at him to free him. He shook his head. "We should keep moving," he said, heading back into the guest house. "There must be a front door somewhere."

 Sais Journal 4

    The citadel was not the prison. This entire vale is shadowed. Syn taunts my hope, but I must continue to hope. There must be a way out. There must be.


    How many times before have I thought I was going to die? Certainly during training with the Horde. Once or twice tending to Coatl-ome. I was certain Drang and I were going to starve while we were hiding in the deserts outside Vrarag. When I first used the wyrmsblood on myself. Which was when Syn chose me.


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    I think that might have been the last time. Even in the dungeons under Eragdush, through the torture and everything else, I knew I was going to survive. I could feel the Nightmare watching from the shadows of our cell. I haven''t feared death for years. Why should I start now? Why would I begin to fear death here, where I can survive death. And if death cannot stop me, how can Syn?

 Engulfing Darkness 6

    Sai recognized the wall as draconic immediately. He couldn''t decide what the building had once been; only the one smashed wall and a bit of floor remained. But the pale, faintly yellow tinge of the limestone, the clean and precise cut of the blocks, and the alternating placement of raised and indented sections could only have been crafted by dragons. He wondered vaguely what murals or paintings had once adorned the wall. Then wondered how long it took for draconic paint to fade so completely.


    After fighting off yet another serpentine nagi, Sai led his raptor on a walk around the remains of the wall. On the far side were other ruined buildings, surrounded by toppled stone. Farther north still was a longer wall that still seemed intact save the part that had been swallowed by a branch of the canyon that had cleaved the Vale. The longer wall, however, Sai could place.


    "That''s the curtain wall of a draconic hatchery," he said. "The egg chambers and incubators will be within those walls. The buildings out here must have been the nurseries for the hatchlings. But why is there a draconic hatchery here?"


    The shrill shriek of a megabat swooping down from the Void interrupted his train of thought. Once they''d put it down and the raptor had eaten its fill of the corpse, they headed north to the wall. Along the west edge, away from the canyon, was an open archway, painted in fresh reds and yellows and greens. Sai walked through and looked around. "What is this place?" he mused. To the east, towards the canyon, the ground grew jagged and uneven as if it had buckled when the canyon opened. Half of the main egg chamber had fallen into the canyon. What remained now stood on a low plateau, and though its upper story seemed to have collapsed, the rest of it appeared intact. North of the gate were a few scattered ruins, behind which loomed a midsized ziggurat that had lost its peak. Beyond that was the sheer face of the void mountains; nothing there had survived their eruption.


    "This place looks like a draconic hatchery after the Horde is through with it," Sai said. "But it feels¡­" He trailed off and looked around again. There was no wind in the Vale; the void mountains stretched past the sky to the Void itself, so no wind could pass through them. So the stillness Sai felt wasn''t unusual. There were no birds in the Vale, no insects. Only children of Syn. In the distance roared a waterfall, cascading into the canyon. "It feels quiet," Sai finished. "Like Syn''s not here." He turned to the raptor. "I don''t know if I''m relieved or worried."


    "Grrr¡­" said the raptor.


    Sai decided to search the egg chamber first. Though unlikely, if any eggs still remained, it would give him raw materials to create any number of alchemical compounds or wyrmkin thralls, especially combined with the wyrmsblood he''d found in the citadel. He scrambled up the rough face of the plateau and turned to help up the raptor which, he noticed too late, had simply jumped to the top. The chamber''s traditional entry hallway had collapsed, leaving a weed-choked walkway lined by pillars that led to the main entrance.


    As soon as he entered, Sai realized that something was wrong. The air was warm and smelled of wood smoke. The braziers were lit with real fire which cast real light. The room to the right of the small foyer inside the door had been converted into a simple but tidy bedroom, complete with a cleanly dressed bed. The room to the left of the foyer was a dining room. There was a basin of water, a simple stone oven, and a wall lined with pots and barrels. Someone had stolen one of the red and gold rugs from the citadel and set it on the floor. At the center of the rug stood a broad wooden table surrounded by stools. And on one of the stools hunched a golden quezpal, who was fitting a sharpened blade of slate into the slotted edge of an ornate macuahuitl.


    Sai had always considered the quezpalli to be the best of the wyrmkin. The orcs did them an injustice by calling their species "lizard." The bipedal quezpalli were taller and stronger even than the Trotzen. They were one of the few varieties of wyrmkin that retained the scale colors of their draconic creators, and though the quezpalli had lost their ancestors'' wings, they''d kept their serpentine tails and faces. But most interestingly¡ªto Sai, at least¡ªwas the fact that they''d also kept their creators'' intellects. The dragons, of course, considered this fact to be their greatest failing; they''d created the wyrmkin to be fodder for the front lines of the war against the Trotzen Horde, not to be sentient creatures with their own wills. But the Abriasha, gods of people, had stolen in and uplifted their creation to personhood, and the dragons would never forgive them.


    "You''re staring, Wulfgar," said the golden quezpal in Draconic.


    Sai''s jaw dropped. "How do you know my name?" he asked, responding in Draconic by reflex. But her voice sounded somehow familiar. "And how can you talk? Lizards don''t talk."


    The quezpal craned her head around to stare at him, her fanged jaw slightly agape. Sai had never learned how to read the emotions of the quezpalli''s reptilian faces. Drang had claimed to be able to tell what they were feeling, but Sai had never really believed him. After a moment of silence, the quezpal''s eyes narrowed and her mouth snapped shut before she turned back to her work. "You''ve forgotten again," she said.


    "I don''t think we''ve ever met," Sai said, walking up to the table. "I''d remember a talking lizard. Now answer my question."


    "You never change," said the quezpal. Sai could not read her expressions, but her tone of voice was clear. And bitter.


    Sai raised his left arm and pointed a claw at the quezpal''s face. "Obey," he commanded, sending out his psychic shackles.


    The fiery pain that lanced back into Sai''s mind through the shackles was as immediate as it was familiar. He cried out and staggered backwards, clutching at his eyes. "You¡ª!" he shouted but was cut off by another wave of pain. He ground his teeth and went through the steps he''d established years ago to put out the psychic flames left in the wake of contact with the mind of a dragon. Once they were extinguished, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The quezpal had not looked up from her work. "You''re a dragon," Sai panted.


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    "And trapped in the form of a slave," the quezpal said. Anger and bitterness burned beneath her words as brightly as the fire had raged through Sai''s mind. "I imagine Syn finds great amusement in forcing me to share a cage with my former jailor."


    "Jailor?" Sai asked. Then he blinked. "Wait¡­ Coatl-ome?"


    The quezpal bared her serrated teeth. "That is the name you assigned me, yes," she said. "So I am still ''Dragon-Two.''"


    "You could have picked a new name for yourself," Sai told her.


    Coatl-ome put down the macuahuitl and smiled at Sai. At least, Sai assumed it was supposed to be a smile. "I could never," she said. The sudden geniality of her tone faded quickly as she continued. "You gave me this name, and I will keep it forever so that I never forget what you did to me."


    Sai scowled back. "And you get on me for never changing," he said.


    The stool clattered to its side as Coatl-ome leapt to her feet and stormed up to Sai. The raptor tried to interpose itself between them, but Sai sent it a command to stay back. "What do you want, Wulfgar?" she hissed.


    "What do I want?" Sai asked. "I want out of here."


    Coatl-ome pointed to the foyer. "Door''s over there," she said.


    "Not the building," Sai shouted at her. "The Vale. I want to be free of Syn."


    "Free of Syn¡­" Coatl-ome said, her voice trailing off. She clutched at the black horns on her head, her eyes clenched shut. Then she turned her back on him, righted her stool, and sat back down. "You want to best the Eternal Nightmare in its own dominion."


    "Yes," said Sai.


    Coatl-ome shook her head and picked up the macuahuitl. "Well," she said, "I suppose nobody has ever been able to say you''re not driven. Even if your drive led you to torture whelps and the yet unhatched."


    "Look," Sai said, walking back up to the table. "We''ve both done awful things. We wouldn''t be here otherwise. But you should help me. We can escape. Together."


    "Being caged in the same Vale as you is bad enough," said Coatl-ome. "I''ll not spend unneeded time with you."


    "Seriously?" Sai asked. "You''d rather be stuck here forever."


    Coatl-ome slammed the macuahuitl down on the table, snapping its hilt clean off and knocking loose several of the blades. "There is no escape, Wulfgar," she shouted. "We will never be free of Syn."


    Sai scowled at her. "You can''t know that if you won''t even try," he told her.


    "Try¡ª!" she replied, clutching at her horns again. Then she took a deep breath, put her claws on the table, and shook her head. "If you insist upon trying to escape, I will offer assistance. I can make you arms and armor in the style of the dragons." She opened her eyes and picked up one of the loose blades. "Nightmare knows I''ve ample time to practice my craft." She looked askance at Sai. "Outside that, you''re on your own. I''ll have no part of it."


    "Fine," Sai said. "And thank you." Coatl-ome grunted and went back to work. Sai watched her work for a moment. "Can I ask you something?"


    "We''re not friends, Wulfgar," said Coatl-ome. Then she blinked. "Wait." She raised her head and sniffed the air. "You smell¡­"


    Sai scoffed. "You''re none to fresh yourself, lizard breath," he said.


    Coatl-ome''s jaw dropped. "Really?" she asked. "Lizard breath? And don''t interrupt me. I was going to say you smell like dragon."


    Sai rapped his chest. "Well it''s one hundred percent orc in here," he said.


    "Your arm begs to differ," said Coatl-ome.


    "And whose fault is that?" Sai asked.


    "Entirely your own," Coatl-ome replied. "But I still sense additional power from you."


    "I do have a vial of wyrmsblood on me," Sai admitted.


    "Really?" Coatl-ome asked. "Wyrmsblood. Still?"


    "Look," Sai said. "I''m going to need every advantage I can get if I''m going to get out of here."


    Coatl-ome shook her head. "And you''ll use the blood of my kin to do it," she said.


    "If that''s what it takes," said Sai. "If it helps, it''s probably not yours this time."


    "No," said Coatl-ome. "I don''t find that helpful. Thank you."


    "Well be helpful then," Sai said. "You know more about wyrmsblood than I do. Teach me something new to do with this."


    Coatl-ome clenched her claws. The raptor growled. "Teach you how to corrupt the blood of my fallen kin?" Coatl-ome asked.


    "The blood''s already spilled, Coatl-ome," Sai told her. "If you want to respect the fallen, help me do something useful with it."


    Coatl-ome narrowed her eyes and said nothing. But eventually she sighed and went back to inspecting the slate blades. "Wyrmsblood bears the essence of the dragons," she said. "We are more than just our ability to bend the mana with our thoughts, which is all your experiments seem to have focused on. We are also the sturdiest of all the creatures on Serinor, famed for our ability to ignore nearly any wound. But it is not our scales or our size that give us that reputation."


    "No," Sai said, "it''s because your wounds close almost as fast as we stab¡­" His voice trailed off. "Oh. Oh!"


    "The alchemy station''s in the ruined ziggurat to the north," she said. "Run your experiments there."


    Sai rambled as he headed back outside. "If I amplify the vital elements of the wyrmsblood and bend the mana signature to be compatible with the Trotzen physique¡­" he said.


    "You''re welcome," called Coatl-ome as he walked out.


    There was only a single room left inside the northern ziggurat. All the others had caved in when the upper floors had collapsed. It was smaller than he''d expected. And cozier. There was a single bed against the far wall with a low armoire beside it. A pair of sparsely filled bookshelves stood against the north wall. "This¡­" Sai said. He walked with hesitation to the foot of the bed. "This place feels¡­" He looked back at the raptor. "I want to say familiar, but¡­ Comfortable, maybe?" He traced a finger over the whorls carved into the footboard of the bed. "It''s odd," he went on. "Like something I can''t remember."


    Then he noticed the table in the corner that was cluttered with beakers and notebooks and an alembic. "By the Nightmare!" he shouted, rushing over to it. "It''s an alchemy set!" He picked up a lethal stiletto from among the other paraphernalia, beaming at the whole lot. "It looks just like the one I used to have in¡­"


    His voice trailed off. Have in where? Why couldn''t he remember? "Have in¡­" He knew he''d seen this alchemy set before. But where had it come from? How did it get here? And why was it so familiar? A distant but piercing chime rang through his thoughts, clouding his memory.


    Sai shook his head and looked around. A distant ringing in his ears quickly faded away. He''d been talking to himself again. "What was I saying?" he asked the raptor. Then he noticed the stiletto in his hand and the alchemy set laid out on the table beside him. "Oh!" he cried. "An alchemy set. That''ll be handy."


    He set down the knife and walked a circle around the center of the room. "This place is nice," he said. "I feel like I could spend forever here." He laughed. "Well. Not forever forever. I still need to get out of this Vale." He stopped walking and stared out the door. "Somehow." He sighed.

 Sais Journal 5

    Coatl-ome is here. She still hates me. Fiercely. And I''m none too fond of her. But still. It''s nice to have a familiar face around, and I think she feels the same way. Even though her face isn''t actually familiar. I think she hates being a lizard even more than she hates me.


    She hates Syn even more, though. She gave me some insights into the wyrmsblood that should let me craft a potion that will give me some of the endless vitality of the dragons. It should let my wounds rapidly close themselves.


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    I did not expect to find wyrmsblood here. I don''t know why Syn would allow it. I can feel the power of it through the vial, thrumming in my corrupted arm. With a full research lab, I could probably devise even more uses for it. But I doubt I''ll find something like that here. I''ll just have to settle for a friendly dragon who can tell me all the secrets of their blood.

 A Sunless Breakfast 2

    Coatl-ome glanced over at Sai from her spot at the table. He''d been staring out the door to the balcony the entire time she''d been roasting the bogling and hadn''t even turned away when she''d set the table. Nichal too had noticed Sai''s absence, and the red lizard had not started eating. Cuatete had already cleared her plate and licked it clean.


    "You know," Sai said finally, "I never thought I''d say this, but I miss the Void."


    "Your bogling is getting cold," Coatl-ome told him.


    He sighed and took his spot at the table. "The sky should be black," he said, poking at his food. "All these stars are unsettling."


    Coatl-ome almost choked on her bite of bogling. "Stars?" she asked. "Stars!" Her voice rose in both pitch and volume as she continued. "Your command of the Draconic tongue is perfect. Your enunciation of our language is better than some dragons." Even though she recognized this as an attempt to aggravate her, she couldn''t help it. He still excelled at it. "The word is sitlali! Why do you insist on corrupting our words into guttural Trotzen drivel?"


    "Because it irritates you," Sai confirmed.


    She grabbed her horns, one of the only truly draconic features she had left. "We are trapped together in an unending nightmare and still you cling to ancient and petty disagreements?" she asked.


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    "Petty?" Sai replied. He scowled at her. "How many of my research assistants did you incinerate?" Nichal covered his eyes as Sai began to shout. "Because I lost count sometime around the time you killed all the ones that were left, destroyed my entire laboratory, and made off with all of my research."


    Coatl-ome pounded the table. "Your research was on me and my siblings," she shouted back. "You kept us caged and started experimenting on us before we had even hatched!"


    "Don''t pretend like you cared about Itzli or Tlaloc," Sai retorted. "You killed them too!"


    "Better dead than stuck with you!" Coatl-ome roared.


    Cuatete backed away from the table. "Skree?" she asked.


    "Please don''t yell at each other," Nichal whined, still covering his eyes.


    Sai took a deep breath. "My experiments left us both better off," he said in a tight but gentler tone. "That research gave you the insights you needed to create the wyrmkin for the dragons, and I was able to grant the psychic abilities of your kin to the orcs."


    Coatl-ome hissed at him, but she too lowered her voice. "I wouldn''t call being reduced to Syn''s playthings ''better off,''" she said.


    Sai opened his mouth but closed it again and glared at her. Soon, he looked away. "It''s possible," he said, "that we both got ahead in life by not entirely thinking through the dark pacts we made with the god known as the Eternal Nightmare."


    "Indeed," agreed Coatl-ome.


    Everyone remained quiet for a time. Only Coatl-ome went back to eating. Sai just poked at his bogling, Nichal glanced back and forth between Sai and Coatl-ome between his fingers, and Cuatete had already finished. Sai pushed his stool away from the table. "I''ve lost my appetite," he said, storming out the front door. Cuatete snatched the bogling steak off his plate before following him. Nichal looked after them, shaking his head.


    "Don''t hurry back," Coatl-ome muttered.

 Fading Echoes 1

    Sai stared at the entrance to the cave that he''d discovered behind the ruined ziggurat in Somber Tune. He could see inside just fine; the not-light that he''d first noticed in the Shadowed Citadel seemed to permeate the entirety of the Vale. The grasses of Somber Tune gave way to a deep moss that covered every patch of the ground inside. From deeper within, he could hear waterfalls.


    He looked up. The cave entrance was a narrow gash in an otherwise smooth face of the void mountains that formed the northern wall of the Vale. Higher up the face, maybe ten meters or so, he could see the lip of a cliff and the tops of several trees growing farther back from the edge. There was something up there. He could feel it. "Do you suppose this cave will take us up there?" he asked.


    "Chirp!" said the raptor.


    Sai nodded. "Me too," he replied.


    The roar of falling water inside the cave was deafening. Not far from the entrance, water cascaded down from above and into a chasm filled with the starry black of Syn''s Void. Sai peeked over the edge. He could make out another cave below, but beyond that was only darkness. "Not going down at the moment," Sai muttered.


    He barely heard the raptor''s growl over the roar of the water, but he could feel the warning through their psychic link regardless. Gripping the long tepoztopilli Coatl-ome had made him in memory of the spears he''d always wielded for the Horde, he hurried away from the edge before the fluttering emerald drake could knock him over the edge. The raptor leapt to try and bite it out of the air, but it swooped nimbly away. It flapped its way towards the ceiling, spun around, and reared back its head with a great inrush of air.


    Which was when Sai stabbed it through the belly with his spear and slammed it to the floor of the cave. The raptor was on it immediately. The winged wyrmkin screeched and thrashed only briefly. Once the raptor was finished, Sai yanked free his spear. "No fire breath today, thanks," he said.


    They worked their way up through the network of caves, always choosing the path that sloped upwards. At times they had to scramble over boulders or up jagged walls, but they managed to continue ascending until they came to a long hallway through which whistled a cold wind. Sai shivered and rubbed his arms. "Where is this wind coming from?" he asked. "There''s no wind in the Vale." He turned to follow the wind to its source but stopped after just a few steps. He cocked his head. "Do you hear that?"


    "Skree?" asked the raptor.


    "I''d swear I heard a voice," Sai said. He looked around. Beside the tunnel they''d just crawled up was another, narrower passage strewn with rubble that led back below. "There it is again!" He hurried down the second passage, faster than was entirely safe. The faint voice echoed through the passage, too soft to make out the words, but still somehow familiar.


    Sai shimmied past a stalagmite at the end of the passage and into a small chamber. Save for a few scattered boulders, a damp collection of stalagmites, and the echoing voice, it was empty. The orc paced through the chamber, checking behind all the rocks to try and find the source. Then he stood at the center of the room and cocked his head. He could almost make out the words.


    "Shall I now share a new nightmare? The wyvern tosses you from its back. You fall, screaming and tumbling through the empty sky. A lizard below catches you. You thank it for saving you. Its eyes are cold. It sinks its teeth into your neck. You scream and break free, but you are surrounded by lizards. All of them bite and claw and tear. They do not hear your pleas."


    Sai shook his head. "I can''t make it out," he said, "but it''s definitely louder here." He turned at the center of the room, searching for the source of the voice. Soon he stopped. No matter which way he turned, the echo always came from behind him. He craned his head around without turning his body. Then he shrugged off his pack and held it in front of him. It echoed. "It''s coming from my pack," he said. He opened the top flap, and the echo got louder. "I have an echo in my pack." He closed his pack, muffling the echo. "Okay," he said, putting it back on his back. "Sure. Why not?"


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    "Chirp!" said the raptor.


    Sai glared at her. "Now I just need to figure out how to get rid of it," he said.


    They headed back up the passage and down the hallway towards the wind, stopping only to put down the pair of werewolves that tried to ambush them. A cleft in the rock at the end of the windswept hall led back out of the caves and onto the overlook Sai had seen from below. The wind still blew, coming from down the mountains to the north. "How is that possible?" Sai cried. Then he stopped. "Do you hear music?" he asked. The song rode the wind with the voice of the earth and the trees. Sai had not had many opportunities to hear Belasolu perform, but he recognized the music immediately as one of the elf''s magical woven songs. This song, though, sounded sad.


    "Grrr¡­" the raptor said.


    Sai followed the music wafting on the breeze to an outcrop that looked out over Somber Tune below. There, beside an ancient oak tree, sat an elf playing an ornate lyre. For a moment, Sai thought the musician was Belasolu. He shared the songweaver''s wooden skin, leafy hair, and diminutive stature. He even wore a similar green, knee-length tunic that bore the sheen of a leaf in summer. But Sai did not recognize the lyre the elf played, and when he turned to look at Sai, the musician''s face was unfamiliar. Belasolu had not joined him in the Vale. Indeed, Sai remembered with a sigh: Belasolu wasn''t actually dead.


    "Greetings," said the elf. He did not stop playing when he spoke.


    Sai walked to the edge of the outcrop where the elf stood. "What is an elf doing here?" he asked.


    "That is a complex question with a long and complicated answer," said the elf. "In summary, the Song is here, so that is where I am."


    "Well that''s cryptic," Sai said with a frown. "You know this is Syn''s domain, right?


    "It''s not," the elf said. "The Song plays on this overlook, and while the Song plays here, this place is mine."


    Sai blinked. "Oh," he said. "You''re a god. Kunago."


    "You honor me," said the Sorrowful Bard, still playing the song of Serinor itself. "I''m but a demigod." Sai searched for a response, but Kunago continued. "I hear you''ve brought your echo back to me."


    "My¡­" Sai started to say. His eyes widened. "Wait, can you stop this echoing?"


    Kunago nodded. "Let me have the echo," he said.


    Sai sighed and rubbed his eyes. "How in Serinor am I supposed to hand you an echo?" he asked.


    "Grow, fading echo," sang Kunago. The song shifted from its lamenting strains to something dark and foreboding. "Ring throughout the Vale."


    "No!" Sai cried. The echo grew louder and louder, its words forever just outside his ability to understand. "Don''t make it louder!"


    Kunago played on, the echo weaving with his song as it grew louder and louder. "Now feel it ring within your being, mortal," Kunago intoned. The air spoke with him.


    "How can I not?" Sai shouted. "It''s loud enough to make my teeth vibrate!"


    The song changed again, returning to its original sad strains. "It''s not the sound setting your teeth on edge," said the Sorrowful Bard. Though the music had died away, the thrumming of the echo remained in Sai''s ears. "It is the power flowing now through you. I have restored to you the Shadowed Voice of the Eternal Nightmare. Speak as it."


    "Wait," said Sai with Syn''s voice. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Kunago had been telling the truth. Sai cleared his throat and rapped his chest. The gestures were meaningless, he knew, but it helped him find his own voice again. He suspected it might take him a while to get used to controlling whose voice he spoke in again. It felt like it had been forever since he''d lost the Shadowed Voice. "Does this mean I can command monsters again?" he asked in his own voice.


    "It does," Kunago said. "Now when you speak, they''ll hear their master."


    Sai laughed. "This is the best news I''ve heard since I woke up here," he said. "I can do anything in here now."


    "The Shadowed Voice will not replace your shackles," Kunago warned. "Not here. The Nightmare''s yet too powerful."


    "Even if I can''t enslave other monsters like I do the wyrmkin, I can still tell them to leave me alone," Sai said with a shrug. "You''ve given me an amazing gift."


    "I''ve yet another gift to give you," Kunago said. The Sorrowful Bard strummed a powerful chord on his lyre. "Ring louder, fading echo. Louder yet."


    "What? Louder" Sai asked. The power of the echo grew louder in his ears. "It gets louder?"


    "Resound my presence throughout all this Vale," said Kunago, though by the end, the echo had grown so deafening that Sai could no longer hear the words.


    "WHAT?" Sai shouted. "TALK LOUDER! I CAN''T HEAR YOU OVER THIS NOISE!"


    Kunago said something to him that he couldn''t hear. But the elf pointed down into Somber Tune at the ruined egg chamber where Coatl-ome lived. Then he turned his back on the orc and went back to playing existence into being.

 Sais Journal 6

    The strangest thing happened to me in Somber Caverns. My pack just stared echoing. There was an echo in my pack. Who do you even go to for help with something like that?


    But it turns out that Kunago dwells on the Echoing Overlook above Somber Tune. I found a path up there through the caverns at the back of Somber Tune, and there he was. The demigod of the arts himself. He says the song is there, so that is where he is. I realize now I don''t entirely know what that means.


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    But Kunago used the fading echo to restore the power that Syn stripped from me. I once again speak with the Shadowed Voice of the Eternal Nightmare. I can command Syn''s monsters as the Nightmare itself. I may get out of here after all.

 Fading Echoes 2

    Sai barged through the door of the egg chamber. "COATL-OME!" he shouted. "YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!"


    The golden quezpal jumped, sending her tools and bits of a tematlatl flying about the room. "By the Nightmare, Wulfgar," she hissed. "I''m sitting right here. You don''t need to shout."


    "WHAT?" Sai asked.


    "Oh," said Coatl-ome. "It''s the echo, isn''t it?"


    "SORRY," said Sai, "I CAN''T HEAR YOU OVER THIS STUPID ECHO!"


    Coatl-ome jabbed a claw into his chest. "Desist," she commanded.


    Sai recoiled, the psychic fire searing through his mind. "Ow!" he yelped, clapping his hands to his ears. "Wow, that stung." Then his jaw dropped and he lowered his hands. "Wait! I can hear again! What did you do?"


    "An old dragon trick to block irritating noises from your mind," Coatl-ome said. She bent to gather her things from the floor. "Now I take it that you have something for me?"


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    "Yeah, this echo in my pack," said Sai. He could feel the power of it still thrumming, even though the noise had stopped. "Kunago told me to bring it to you. I think that''s what he said, at least. It was hard to hear anything at the time."


    Coatl-ome returned to her seat and went back to lacing the sling strings of the tematlatl. "You bear a token of the Sorrowful Bard," she said. "I can make you something more functional to contain it. It should let you channel a bit of Kunago''s power as well."


    "Contain it?" Sai asked. "How?"


    "Kunago''s most closely associated with music," said Coatl-ome. "So a bit of ear jewelry would work best, I believe."


    Sai frowned at her. "You want me to wear earrings?" he asked.


    Coatl-ome snorted. Smoke drifted from her nostrils. "I don''t care what you wear," she said. "If you want something that will let you make use of that echo, bring me some precious metals and stones that you like and I''ll make a focus for it. Or just live with an echoing pack. It''s all the same to me."


    "How do you know how to do this?" Sai asked.


    The golden quezpal''s hands went still. "Time passes strangely in the nightmare," she said. She turned her head to stare out the door to the balcony. "And there is no sun to track the passage of days. But I have lived in Somber Tune, listening to Kunago''s song, for a very, very long time. I can work with the echo."


    "Okay," said Sai. "I guess. We haven''t really been in here that long, though."


    Coatl-ome flicked her tongue. "Right," she said, returning to her work. "To each our own nightmare, I guess."

 The Gods of Serinor 1

    The Eldritch One


    <ul>


    <li>Nameless</li>


    <li>God of Time and Fate</li>


    <li>Holy places called Timeless</li>


    </ul>


    First among the gods. It knows the entire course of Serinor''s history and forever protects its world from the destructive machinations of the Eternal Nightmare. Often appears as a monstrous wolf to mock Syn''s powerlessness.


    The Eternal Nightmare


    <ul>


    <li>Syn</li>


    <li>God of Darkness and Destruction</li>


    <li>Holy places called Shadowed</li>


    </ul>


    Primal force of destruction. Syn longs to destroy Serinor, everything living on it, and the very gods themselves. Takes a variety of forms, such as a shadowy biped or black dragon. Most often, Syn speaks directly from the shadows without taking physical form.


    The Unsatisfied Architect


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    <ul>


    <li>Nilamaak</li>


    <li>God of Places</li>


    <li>Holy places called Forgotten</li>


    </ul>


    Sculptor of the face of Serinor. Nilamaak crafted every known place with its own two hands. He is never satisfied with his work and constantly seeks to improve it. Extremely reclusive. The few possible sightings are speculative, as the subjects never acknowledge their divinity.


    The Unnumbered Ancestors


    <ul>


    <li>The Abriasha (plural)</li>


    <li>Gods of People</li>


    <li>Holy places called Ancestral</li>


    </ul>


    Patrons of the civilized races of Serinor. The Unnumbered Ancestors elevated their chosen from the ranks of Syn''s monsters, lifting us out of the Nightmare. We''re all their children. Always appear as green fairies, and always refer to themselves in the plural.


    The Sorrowful Bard


    <ul>


    <li>Kunago</li>


    <li>Demigod of the Arts</li>


    <li>Holy places called Echoing</li>


    </ul>


    A Kinohi songweaver said to have been granted godhood when his music threatened to unravel the fates decreed by the Eldritch One. Now plays the song of reality itself at the direction of the other gods.


    The Harbinger of Nightmare


    <ul>


    <li>Sai</li>


    <li>Demigod of Monsters</li>


    <li>Holy places called Howling</li>


    </ul>


    A Trotzen alchemist credited with the creation of the wyrmkin. The Harbinger speaks with the shadowy voice of the Eternal Nightmare and leads its monstrous children in the culling of the weak.

 Fading Echoes 3

    Sai strode into the courtyard of the Shadowed Citadel with his head high, clad in the tlahuiztli that Coatl-ome had crafted for him, its armored top crafted with scales from countless drakes. Gugalan waited there as he had before, kneeling against his planted greatsword at the center of the courtyard. "Must we do this again?" the hulking minotaur asked.


    "I was kind of hoping you''d left by this point," Sai admitted.


    "Go back inside, little orc," Gugalan said. Just as before, Gugalan sounded more bored than threatening. "Our Master has commanded that I not let you pass this way."


    "No," said Sai. "I''m coming through, and you can''t stop me." He frowned. That was the exact same thing he''d said the first time. His raptor even growled the same growl from behind him.


    The d¨¦j¨¤ vu continued as the minotaur shook his head and picked up his shield from the ground beside him. "I can," the minotaur said again, "though it saddens me that I must." He reversed his grip on his sword, stood up to his full height, and yanked the sword from the ground. The metal of his shield and pauldron still gleamed with the not-light of the stars.


    But Sai refused to let the outcome of the fight repeat itself as well. He forced the raptor to remain still, activated the Shadowed Voice, and pointed at Gugalan. "You will let me pass," he commanded.


    Gugalan lowered his sword. "I see you''ve reclaimed our Master''s voice, Harbinger," the minotaur said.


    Sai''s arm faltered. "Syn is not my master," he said, returning to his own voice.


    "Saying it does not make it true," Gugalan said. He slid sword into the side of an open sheath strapped to his back. Again his movements reminded Sai of Gretchen. Then the minotaur waved towards the southern gates before fastening the top of his scabbard. "Go. You are free to pass unchallenged. I will hinder you no more."


    Sai blinked. "What?" he said. "Why would you do that? I thought Syn commanded you not to let me through."


    "That''s true," Gugalan said. The minotaur looked to the starry sky. "And I am Gugalan, the Nightmare''s Enforcer." He sounded as if the fact would drive him to tears if would he let it. He looked down at Sai. Sai could not read the emotions in his bovine face. He looked angrier than he sounded. "But you have decided to reclaim our Master''s voice. You are yourself no longer. You are again a creature of the Eternal Nightmare."


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    "No," Sai insisted too forcefully. "I stole this power. Syn has no hold over me."


    "So you say," said Gugalan. He turned his back on Sai and the raptor and trudged towards a small wheelhouse that stood between the arches of the two southern gates. "Go on, Harbinger," he called over his shoulder. "You have more important things to do than argue with a fellow child of Syn."


    Sai glared after him. "I''m not a child of Syn!" he called, but the minotaur ignored him. Sai turned to his raptor. "I''m not."


    "Grrr¡­" said the raptor.


    Sai started to head out the gates and into the farmland to the south of the Shadowed Citadel but paused as he reached the wheelhouse. He frowned at the door Gugalan had disappeared into. Something about the minotaur''s demeanor bothered him. And being allowed to pass just because he had managed to reclaim Syn''s voice struck him as far too convenient. Setting his jaw, Sai followed Gugalan into the wheelhouse.


    The ceiling inside was high, but the walls were close. The door opened between two rooms divided by a short wall. Sai suspected they had once been stable stalls. One side appeared to be Gugalan''s bedroom, with a crude bed that seemed too small for the enormous minotaur, a large table, and packed bookcase. The outer wall on the opposite side was covered in gears and levers and other machinery. At the back were two battered stone pillars standing on either side of a pit. Syn''s stars winked at him from within the darkness.


    "Thanks for visiting me," said Gugalan. The minotaur leaned against the wall beside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He still wore his armor, but his sword and shield hung on a rack beside the bookcase.


    Sai started at Gugalan''s voice. "You''re¡­" he began to say, almost out of habit. He stopped, but decided to continue. "Welcome?"


    The permanent anger creasing Gugalan''s brows seemed to soften. "It grows lonely waiting for our master''s campaigns to progress," he said. He glanced at the pit between the pillars. "The gods do not operate on mortal timelines."


    Sai followed Gugalan''s gaze. "What is¡­?" Sai began to ask, but he felt the answer before it came.


    "Have you come to pay your respects at my shrine?" Syn asked. The darkness of the pit seemed prepared to claw its way up into the space between the pillars. The raptor growled.


    "A shrine?" Sai asked. "To you?"


    "I am one of the gods of Serinor," Syn replied. "And I can grant power that rivals the gifts of any of my so-called peers. But you already knew that." Sai sighed, and the darkness laughed. "Do come back," Syn said, and the darkness in the pit was still.


    Sai and Gugalan stared at the Shadowed Altar in silence for some time. Eventually Sai glanced up at the minotaur. He looked angry again. "I think I''ll just go," Sai said.


    Gugalan snorted but said nothing more as Sai and his raptor hurried out of the wheelhouse and south through the gates of the Citadel.

 Sais Journal 7

    I used the Shadowed Voice to command Gugalan not to kill me, but I didn''t need to use it to make him let me out of the Citadel. He just let me through. Said that since I''d reclaimed the voice of Syn, I''d reaffirmed my place as its chosen.


    I followed him into the wheelhouse in the courtyard of the Shadowed Citadel where he¡­ Lives? Waits? I don''t actually know what he does in there when I''m not around. He has a shrine to Syn in there with him, but I never see him at it. And though he is obviously a ferocious combatant, he always just seems¡­


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    Sad.