Tom Lloyd - The ragged man

It ends now, Styrax thought with grim finality.

The Land exploded underneath him. Everything went white.

With his hand flat against the ground, Isak watched lightning strike the chains around the earthen platform. A haze of white fire encircled it, leaping up from the iron links and between the steel-capped stakes set in the surrounding ditch. Great chunks of soil flew up into the air as great thick-limbed figures of earth and stone rose up on all sides. The figures moved slowly, but with strange grace, reaching to the sky as they ascended from the churned ground between platform and ditch.

Their inhuman faces were serene as they advanced on the black-armoured white-eye, quite unlike other elementals Isak had seen before. But these were Ralebrat; they were a breed apart from the rest – and they had the chance for atonement for their deeds during the Great War within their grasp. Some looked carved from stone, others were made of pebbles and dirt, like a statue without its skin. As the fire all around intensified, they attacked.

Isak stood, letting the cloak slip away from his shoulders. Underneath, he was shirtless, displaying the heart rune engraved on his chest, and as faces turned his way, he felt their gaze like needles, pricking into the long swathes of twisted tissue that covered most of his body. One hand covered his belly and the jagged scar that ran up his stomach. That wound he'd not received in Ghenna. That memory the witch had not been able to erase.

Isak watched Styrax's blade, remembering its presence in his own gut – the white-hot pain, the way it jerked through flesh and bone, how it ripped out his guts… and he remembered his own high-pitched screaming. At that moment he'd smelled the hot, foetid breeze and he'd heard the chittering voices as darkness fell like acid eating his vision, and the emptiness of the grave swept over him.

Isak pulled his body straight as he faced the man who had killed him. On his chest the heart rune blazed hot and fierce on his skin, but this pain was welcome.

Styrax didn't see him at first. He moved with dazzling speed, wielding Kobra with strength and precision, hewing a space in the centre of the platform, even as more Ralebrat rose to ward off the assault of the Menin bodyguard. As he moved, the white-eye lord weaved a skein of magic about him, a net of light spun from his sword to tangle the Ralebrat as they closed in on him. Already a dozen lay on the ground, looking like shattered monuments as the injured elementals struggled to escape the broken forms they had taken.

Then he caught sight of Isak, and Isak felt the look like a blow. It took all his strength not to shy away from Styrax, to lift his eyes and match the gaze of the one to whom his life and death had been bound, long before Isak was even born.

Styrax hesitated too, and the Ralebrat pulled back, keeping just beyond range of the fanged sword. On the other side of the ditch that encircled the earthen mound, the battle was still raging fiercely. Within the defensive boundary, there was a moment of unearthly calm.

'I killed you,' Styrax cried. 'I saw you fall into Ghenna.'

Isak felt the words like a punch in the gut. Above him, as the sky was torn by lightning he cringed from the brightness, raising his left hand to shield his eyes. The thick lines of shadowy scarring on his left arm were vivid against his pale skin.

'I know,' Isak said in barely more than a whisper, slowly lowering his arm again. 'You killed me. And here I stand.'

'How?' Styrax asked.

Isak gave him a broken smile, though his damaged lips and missing teeth made it more a grimace. 'Your arrogance – your rage – they showed me the way. We are all slaves to our birth.' He brought his right hand from behind his back and in it was Eolis, shining unnaturally bright against the storm-darkened moor.

'You want to fight me again?' Styrax laughed coldly.

Isak shook his head, though the damage to his neck and shoulder made it almost impossible for him to turn to the left now. 'The Gods made you to be peerless in combat,' he said. 'I cannot beat you. No single mortal could beat you. And now no God would dare try.'

Styrax was silent a moment, then he removed his helm, and Isak saw his face properly for the first time. In his dreams it had always been covered, and the day Styrax had killed him, pain had blurred his vision. To his surprise, it was an unremarkable face, neither ugly nor handsome. Lord Bahl had looked rough and unfinished, but that was not the case with Kastan Styrax: his face was simply a canvas upon which power and strength had been painted. It was with the set of his jaw and the look in his eye that made Lord Styrax arresting to behold.

'Then why are you here?'

Isak saw his finger brush the Crystal Skull fused to his sword-hilt, summoning the wyvern. The Menin Lord knew a trap when he saw it, but he was content to talk while his wyvern braved the lightning-lit sky to get to him.

'To judge you,' Isak said simply. 'Look at the Skull in your hand.'

Styrax stared at the shining object for a few moments. 'This is not the one King Emin took from Scree?'

'It is Dreams,' Isak confirmed, and held Eolis awkwardly out before him. The sword bore another Skull. Behind him three figures were slowly approaching. Legana and the witch of Llehden flanked him, one on either side. Their part in this was played. Mihn stood behind, in his master's shadow. They watched in silence, bearing witness to the consequences of their actions.

'This one is Ruling, first among the Crystal Skulls,' Isak said.

He stabbed the sword down into the ground and unleashed the power of the Skull. White cracks appeared in the ground, racing through the trampled grass towards the mage's platform.

Styrax immediately raised his defences and a cocoon of energy burst into life all around him before the shining cracks could reach him – but the shimmering power raced around the platform, well clear of the Menin lord.

Once again the tortured air roiled under the magical assault. Isak felt the scars on his skin come alive with pain, but still he continued, guiding the force through the Skull and into the sword.

Now, for the first time, he raised his voice, crying out, 'Obey me – come forth!'

Colours burst all around and lightning lashed the ground between them, ripping the air apart to reveal a swirling column of darkness behind.

'Come!'

The darkness writhed, coils of energy spreading to encircle the platform. Jagged lightning forked across the sky, again and again, striking all around the perimeter of the earthen platform. The Ralebrat reeled and cowered, some dying even as they supplicated themselves.

Isak pulled Eolis from the ground and levelled it towards the darkness, and the column wrenched around so violently the air itself ignited, burning white-hot. Death stepped out of the dark and raised His golden sceptre and all around the platform the Gods of the Upper Circle of the Pantheon stepped forward, obeying Isak's call.

The Skull of Ruling was tied to Death, the Chief of the Gods, and it was the most powerful, and the most perilous to use. Aryn Bwr had seen that, and known that possession conferred the strength of rule, but Death's place was at the very centre of the Land, and that was too much for even a king to bear long.

At the sight of the Gods who'd abandoned them in punishment millennia ago, the Ralebrat attacked once more, throwing themselves with abandon at the Lord of the Menin. His protective cocoon burst blindingly as they destroyed themselves upon it, but still they did not stop.

'Peerless you were made, and unmatched you will die!' Isak shouted over the wind that churned around them.

The Gods of the Upper Circle knelt, arms outstretched in the torrent of magic that was whirling, faster and faster, around the platform, all focused on Lord Styrax – save for Nartis, whose blank, midnight-blue face watched Isak.