The Eight had scoffed at humanity, scoffed at mortals. And, despite the one exception -Eironn-an- they prospered in wealth throughout the ages. They had claimed to cast off the shackles of mortality, and as such mortals were insects beneath their feet. They learned to respect those insects, eventually. It was to happen at some point.
Of course, they were not expecting to learn that respect by being stabbed in the gut by those puny little insects.
***
Maioran might have been having a nice dream. He didn't really remember, seeing as he woke up to a scream.
Immediately, he checked the dim room, lit only by a shaft of moonlight let in by the window. Tieo sat up, eyes wide, before his hands reached the waterskin next to him, and he drew out the water in an arc, leaping from the bed. Callan jumped up, a blade sprouting from his hand, the leaf quivering. Maioran grabbed his sword.
For a moment, there was silence, before that scream let out again. This time, when he could slow down to hear it, Maioran recognized it as female. Someone was in the women's inn room!
The three of them rushed out the door, ready to attack, before Maioran slammed his shoulder into the ladies' door, sword brandished, ready to dispatch whatever adversary had broken in to threaten Aoife and Invidia.
Instead, they saw something truly horrifying.
Invidia had shoved one of the pillows over her head, so her face was sandwiched between the pillow and the bed. Her glowing hair spilled out from between them, and her eyes were narrowed in anger.
And Aoife...
Aoife stood upright before a window, moonlight framing her body, making her white nightdress seem almost luminous. She seemed for a moment, transfixed, as if the moonlight had bespelled her and held her in a trance. And then, she started to move.
Her arms shot over her head, contorting and bending and extending. Her hips distorted and shifted, constantly moving as her feet pounded the floor, constantly stepping as she swayed this way and that, her hair whipping one way and then the next. She let out another cry, which was more like a war whoop, before continuing to shake and shudder like a woman possessed.
It took a moment for Maioran to recognize what she was doing. She was dancing. It was an abomination, a truly terrifying thing to behold, but it was what confronted him. Her jerky, erratic movements seemed more like some sort of unclean spirit twisting her limbs into unnatural shapes, but Maioran somehow recognized the dancing.
She whirled, turned around, and gave a short shriek of shock, her eyes. Quickly, Aoife made a gesture with her hands, and then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone. "Oh... oh dear," her disembodied voice said. "You caught me at an inopportune time."
"What did I just see?" Tieoran asked quietly.
"I think you saw her try to dance," Maioran said under his breath.
"That was dancing?" Tieo asked.
"Emphasis on 'try to dance.'" Maioran sheathed his sword. "What was that all about?"
Aoife reappeared on her bed. "Well, some good news came in."
"You got a letter at this time at night?" Maioran asked.
"No. The methods for which I gathered information were a bit more... mystical."
"She was using magic," Tieoran whispered.
"I know," Maioran hissed.
"Please, sit down, it will be a bit of a long chat," Aoife said.
Maioran stepped into the room and sat on the floor. Tieo sat right next to him, but Callan stood, a bit away. "So, what did your messenger tell you?"
"My... group has agents in Saefel Caeld. Our destination." Aoife brushed a strand of red hair out of her face. "They had just reported that a colossal battle had taken place."
"That's good news?" Maioran asked. "I may be sleep-addled, but I fail to see how that's good."
"Well, the battle was between two people. Two... beings, I should say. We had a Dragonblessed and-"
"Dragonblessed?" Callan asked.
"Ah. They're one of the seven races who fuse with a dragon. Two people, a dragon and a human, for example, enjoin their corporeal forms into one. Both souls are bound to one body. A single form with two minds. Quite powerful, and has access to the magic of the dragon, and possibly the other as well," Aoife explained.
"So, there's one of them," Callan said. "Who was he fighting?"
"Kazalibad. Kazalibad the Skinstealer, the Avaricious."
Maioran blinked. "As in Kazalibad, one of the Eight?" Aoife nodded. "Fairy-tale bogeymen, told to frighten children? A monster used in preachy morality plays?" Maioran asked.
"Well, no. The preachy morality plays don't actually capture how evil and terrible he is," Aoife said. "But, he had one thing going for him. He had intelligence, and could regenerate from a mere trace. So he left vials of his blood around the world, making it practically impossible to find him and destroy him."
"Okay. So he won?" Maioran asked. "He won the battle with the Dragonblessed?"
"No. He lost. Somehow, the Dragonblessed had slain Kazalibad, and had tainted his blood with dragon blood and burned every trace of him out of the world," Aoife said. "Do you have any idea how immense that is?"
"No. He's just a monster," Maioran said.
"Just a monster?" Aoife shook her head. "No. Kazalibad is much more than that. He is a monster, yes. But he was also one of the Eight. One of eight immortals to use dark aspects of magic to turn themselves into deathless beings. They perverted the nature of the world, polluted it with their mere existence. My master, the sorceress who I apprenticed under, the Necromancer, she was seeking a spell to have death claim Kazalibad, seeking to develop an enchantment to prevent him from returning to a body."
"Well, if he's dead, she can relax," Tieo said.
"Yes." Aoife nodded. "It is proof that the Eight, our enemy, can be slain. They had proclaimed themselves to be free of death, but it seems that our unnamed hero has proven otherwise."
"What happened to him?" Maioran asked. "Is he alive?" He didn't know why, but he wanted the guy to be alive. The idea of a hero being slain bothered him.
"Our agent saw him collapse, but could not follow up on him. We don't know if he survived. I saw him, that time when I was drawn into the future. He seemed nice enough," Aoife said. She paused. "Get your rest. We shall speak of this on the morrow."
Maioran nodded. He could feel his eyelids drooping, and the weight of sleep making his limbs sluggish. "We'll see you tomorrow."
***
"Again!"
Zael ducked the practice sword, before deflecting the next blow with his wooden blade, the clack of wood on wood ringing out through the forest. The blow nearly jarred the practice sword from his hand. He thrust his blade out, but his opponent deflected it, and slammed the practice sword into the goblin's already tender gut.
Zael doubled over, gasping for breath, sweat dripping off his green skin. "Blood and bones, man!" he managed to get out. "Why are you so bloody sadistic?"
Vanzhar, the Erinyan, shrugged. "That's not sadistic. It's tough, but not sadistic. It's what I went through."
"I never heard that the Agyar beat their warriors," Zael said.
"I was born in an Agyar country. Received an Agyar name. But I trained in a warrior's temple." He smiled, his glowing blue eyes glinting dangerously. "I am coddling you compared to what they did to me."
"Oh?"
"They started every morning for five years by beating me, so by the end I was immune to pain," Vanzhar said. "They trained me with a dozen weapons, until I had mastered the martial skills to slay evil wherever I found it," he said. "They were cruel and sadistic, it seemed. They enjoyed beating me. No," he said, "they enjoyed beating the weakness out of me."
"Oh, well, why aren't we wearing shirts?" Zael asked. His torso was drenched in sweat, but the black skin and blue fissures of the Erinyan's massive and well-muscled form was unchanged. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"Simple. It lets you see your failures." Vanzhar said. "Look at your body." Zael looked down and winced. His chest and abdomen weren't green, but a mottled brown and purple, all from bruises. Vanzhar had nothing, no mark except for a spot on his shoulder that was a faint light blue. Zael had scored a lucky blow on him. "Consider that incentive not to get hit."
Zael nodded, before grabbing his shirt, hanging off a tree branch. "Eva probably has some strange task set out for me."
"You'll refer to my lady as the Necromancer. She's earned that title. Don't forget what she did for you." Zael winced as his chest suddenly stung. No, he wouldn't forget. Dying wasn't something that you forgot.
"Fine. I wonder what she's up to now." Zael marched towards the tiny cottage, before stopping. Why was there light bursting through the windows? Strange, it seemed to flicker faster than candlelight, and the luminescence had strange, otherworldly colors. And... was that music?
He opened the door and stopped, staring. It was his new home, along with that mad sorceress called the Necromancer and her guard. A thin pallet with a mattress leaking straw was what he collapsed into after training (for what, the Necromancer never said), and next to it was Vanzhar's. The sorceress slept in the loft. A small kitchen, armed only with a stove and a few pots and pans, was kept in the corner.
And the entire room was lit up with unearthly light and trumpet calls. Sitting on the ground, in the middle of the cabin, the Necromancer named Eva Leonastael sat, holding a glass of wine up (where she kept the wine, Zael had no clue), toasting alongside several forms that appeared to be made out of mist.
"What are you doing?" Zael asked.
"Celebration," Eva said. "He is dead. Dead at last!"
"Who? Who is dead?" Zael asked. The fact that she was celebrating someone's death was rather disturbing, though not for a necromancer. That made a twisted and very morbid sort of sense. Though, Eva didn't seem to give off the air that other necromancers gave off. There was no fascination with death or dying present with her, and her attire in black and white was less of a statement of death and darkness, Zael suspected, and more of a fashion choice due to her skin's paleness and her hair's dark shade.
"Kazalibad. Kazalibad Skinstealer, Kazalibad the Avaricious. Dead!" Eva smiled. "Come, sit with me and toast to that monster's demise!"
"I was unaware that he even was real. I thought he was a mere myth," Zael said. Eva waved her hand, and a second glass appeared, made out of what appeared to be fine crystal. "What is this made of?" Zael asked, twirling the goblet by the stem.
"Hardened air," Eva said. She motioned for him to sit down and with a wave of her hand, dismissed the other misty figures. "One of my associates had seen him die, and we had just run some testing sorceries to determine if he still existed in our world, if his soul still clung to life." She smiled and sipped the wine. Zael did the same, and the blood red liquid was particularly sharp and sour, but aromatic. "He is gone, gone! One less abomination to walk the earth!"
"Who killed him? From what I remember of the stories told to me, he was unkillable. As long as a single drop of blood remained, he could come back," Zael said.
"A dragon. Well, a Dragonblessed. A dragon and a human, or any other race, that have fused together. He used some trick with his blood to... well, the entire explanation is difficult to summarize... think of it as a sort of identity-bound poison, instead of bodily-bound."
"So when he made a new body..." Zael began.
"...he brought the poison with him," Eva finished. "Yes. This means we're closer to our goal. It means a few things." She paused. "I have secured the services of a local blacksmith. He will teach you his trade. You best learn, for the coming war."
"Coming war?" Zael asked.
"Yes, and you shall craft our ensorcelled weaponry." Eva smiled. "More wine?"
"Yes." He gulped down another glass. "Who is the war between? What are the sides?"
Eva smiled. "It's the eternal war. The struggle between light and dark, life and death, virtue and vice. It's the war between Good and Evil, and you're going to help us slay all that is evil."