The Forging Of The Fulcrum Hammer/Part 6

The 12th Day of Resplendent Fire, 768 in the Year of Our Empress.

"Is this really the Blessed Isle?" Ledaal Vira asked, looking about with sad eyes. Even dematerialized, she was palely beautiful, more so thanks to the Necromancies Dissent knew. But the tragic cloud that had come over her since her death had only grown deeper with the passing years.

"It is," the Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace said and he shuddered as he said it. He was a big man, over seven feet tall, and his physique was undeniably massive. Dissent's hands were forged soulsteel, as big as the rest of him, and the Enthralled Chains crisscrossed his body beneath the large resplendently royal robes of the First and Forsaken Lion.

He was not the most terrifying Abyssal in the Underworld. But only the First and Forsaken Lion had stronger arms and Dissent was wise and old and powerful in the ways of Essence, beyond the reckoning of other Abyssal. That was one of the reasons he had been sent.

The blight of Creation burned across his senses in the South, and that was in the middle of the desert. Here, the stink of life forced itself down his throat. The soulsteel linked across his frame and the soulsteel fused to the bones of his arms were a reassuring chill against Creation's dominion.

"I wish I could see it with living eyes again," Vira sighed. The dead Earth Immaculate still wore her robes, as Dissent had decided long ago there was little point in preventing her. She'd once been his teacher in his youth but Vira had given up her soverignty at the same time she'd lost her life at his hands. At the moment, she seemed almost alive though. The ghostly Dragon-Blooded was more animated than she'd been since enslaving her with his Threefold Chaining of the Living. It pleased him. He wondered if it should.

"You exist here by my will alone," Dissent said sternly. "Be grateful. I could abandon you in the wasteland of the living world, in a place with no Shadowland and nothing to keep the Immaculates from destroying you. I still could."

"It would be a blessing," Vira said with surprising venom.

Dissent glanced back at his other companions. Vira's Hungry Ghost followed him as his guard, as it had for years. The other was a more remarkable being.

"As long as the Immaculate's Necromancy binds you, your soul is consigned to Oblivion, should you die," observed the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury. She was stunning, inhumanly beautiful in a cold statuesque manner. A man might mistake her for a beauty of an Age, if he didn't look too close. Inspection would reveal to anyone that there was nothing human left behind her seemingly serene eyes. Clad in soulsteel mail, the Dusk Caste wore a Daiklave without the self-possession so typical of duelists. Perhaps that was because she had spent a significant portion of her life commanding men rather than directly killing them.

"Of course, Maiden," Vira said, her neck dropping submissively. Dissent liked that. She was the only piece of his past left now and, like all the things that mattered, she had to be broken for him to keep her around.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he said. Her eyes flashed at the mention of her once mortal rank but she'd started it by calling him an Immaculate. It was petty but sometimes such things gave them an odd source of familiarity. To a man and woman who had foresworn their very names, any history was a treasured sliver of identity.

"We're coming up on the town," the Relentless Maiden said.

"Yes," Dissent agreed. "Which is why I want you to hold here."

"I don't understand, Dissent. Why are we even here?" The Maiden put her slim hands on those fantastic hips of hers and gave him a coldly expectant look. "The Imperial City is to the northeast, according to our maps. Why have we strayed so far off course?"

"Because They tell me to," Dissent answered. "We are here because there's something They want me here for."

"I'll wait," the Relentless Maiden said. She stretched and Dissent looked away. Beautiful or not, a century and a half of Immaculate life made some kinds of behaviors reflexive, especially when they came to bosoms of that quality. "Try to stay out of trouble. I'm on a schedule."

Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace left the other Abyssal behind, trailed now only by his two ghosts. Vira hummed a soft tune from his childhood, a nostalgic air of centuries long ago lost. The Hungry Ghost was silent. And Dissent himself tried to ignore her melody as he slowly walked into the town.

It was called Lonesome Thought, or at least he thought it was. The last time Dissent had been here was 74 years ago when he was still on circuit. This place was a resort for House Cynis and the natural beauty of the surroundings were doubtlessly quite pleasant for them. Maybe that's why it smelled so much here, all that ugly life everywhere.

"Father, thank goodness you're here!"

A dozen young men ran up and surrounded him. Dissent looked down at the throng with wary eyes. His Charms would protect his identity and appearance here, as they obviously were, but these people saw him as an Immaculate...one they were expecting.

| Go with them. | the Whispers said in his mind.

"Yes, I'm here. Bring me to the trouble." He didn't know why he said those words but he felt the Neverborn guidance on his mouth. Dissent hurried after them, trailed by his invisible ghosts.

The streets of the Cynis resort were oddly vacant. Dissent saw men and women peeking out through shuttered windows and he wondered. The Realm was not tolerant of its peasant stock avoiding work. What had happened here that frightened everyone this much? Perhaps plague?

"She's on the House grounds, Father," one of the men on his right said. "They're holding her in Cynis Marena's spirit-summoning outbuilding. It's the only place solidly built enough to keep her in and we're not sure it's enough either. Thank you for getting here so quickly, Father, we thought it would be at least another day before you arrived."

"I want you to clear the grounds for me," Dissent said through the guidance of the Whispers. "Keep people away from the grounds at any cost."

"Of course, Father."

"How does it feel, Dissent?" Vira asked in his ear. The dematerialized woman's breath soothed the burning anger of the living world. "These people need help and here you are, the answer to their prayers. Do you remember what it was like?"

"Shut up!" he said harshly. "I would have pressed on in service for centuries more if you hadn't hunted me, Vira. I am what the Realm made me." The words rang falsely in Dissent's ears but he ignored it. No matter the choices he'd made, the Realm was culpable. The Immaculate Order, the Scarlet Empress...even Pasiap Himself bore responsibility for their Heretic.

The grounds of the Cynis manor were spacious and well-tended, as he would expect in a resort town. It sat on a hill overlooking the town below and it afforded a very large view of the Blessed Isle's polluted landscape. The mansion itself was a large stone building, which was suggestive in and of itself. The Dragon-Blooded favored stone where their Animas were likely to light. Dissent didn't want to think about what Cynis did in a pleasure-house that could ignite their Anima.

Slightly away from the stone building was a smaller structure. It was built of the same thick granite used in the manor but its surface was bespeckled with arcane etchings instead of the elaborate flags and heraldic crests that decorated the main house. Dissent made for the door, Hungry Ghost on his left, Vira on his right.

He kicked it with one foot and was astonished to see it hold. The Cynis household must have taken great pains to make sure nothing got in through that door...or out through it. He knew a Charm or two that would bypass this barrier handily enough, but that simply wasn't his style. Dissent drew back his soulsteel fists and struck the door double-handed.

The door exploded in a shower of wood fragments already rotten from his touch.

Dissent ducked the overhead and stepped fearlessly into the room. The heavier debris had landed but a choking cloud of dust cut visibility, thanks to the decaying effects of his body. It seemed to be stronger lately. Waking in the morning to dead grass surrounding him was nothing unexpected but sometimes his feet left discolored vegetation in his wake. That was strange, he thought.

The room held a variety of shelves full of arcane equipment and tools. Dissent cast a contemptuous glance over the trappings of Dragon-Blooded summoning. Though the Cynis who kept this workshop probably had a century of experience on him, his understanding and power already far outstripped hers. The summoning circle on the floor looked interesting but ultimately ordinary.

There was no one around. Where was the prisoner? Why had the Whispers led him to this empty room? Not quite empty. Dissent spotted the mouse in a corner with a smirk.

| Not a mouse. | the Whispers said.

"It can't be..." Dissent said in disbelief. The mouse seemed to be perfectly ordinary... except for a faint black mark on its cheek. A mark that looked like a woman's kiss.

"It is," Heart-Wrought Silver said, shedding the form of the animal. The woman was shrouded head to toe in that voluminous gray robe he'd last seen her. In place of a face was a green silk veil with a gold butterfly print worked into it. Her gloved hands were folded but Dissent remembered the moonsilver chains concealed up her sleeves.

This was his Lunar Mate, the woman his soul told him he should love. This was the Golden Dragon reborn, his First Age predecessor's murdered spouse in a new guise just as he was. This was the woman who had magically chained his spirit and left him for dead in the desert.

"You left me in the South to die! I could kill you now!" Dissent snarled, taking a jerky step forward. His soulsteel hands twanged with the strain as he tightened them into irresistible fists. The urge to act on his threat pounded in his blood. He wanted her dead so badly his teeth ached.

"You've certainly had practice at it," she said coolly. Dissent's anger diminished to a smolder at the reminder and he smirked grimly at her. Heart-Wrought Silver lived now because Dissent's former incarnation had murdered her husband, just as he had almost done. "Killing is too easy for you." She was so much calmer than the last time they'd met.

"That is because death is the natural end of life and all things fall toward it," Dissent said. "Life is pain or suffering because people resist inevitability."

"Spare me your Deathlord rhetoric, Chance," Heart-Wrought Silver said, sounding bored. It was odd to hear a name from her lips that had once been his. She was the only one who knew it, who remembered it. "Why...wait, why are you even here?"

"Why are you?" Fervent Dissent countered. It occurred to him that the question was at least as pertinent to her presence as it was to his own. "I came because this is where I'm supposed to be. What does that have to do with you?"

| Everything. | the Whispers said in his mind. | Kill her. Kill her now. We want her dead! Kill her quickly before she speaks another word. |

Dissent could hear Heart-Wrought Silver take a breath to answer. He almost attacked right then. A single clean hit to her torso would pulverize her ribs, stop her heart and prevent her from talking. The Neverborn's Will beat down upon him...but he hesitated.

She was a Lunar. She couldn't influence him or manipulate his mind with words. Dissent knew he was immune to her chaining Charm. What danger was there for him now? And he didn't want to kill her yet.

"So Fate brings us together," Heart-Wrought Silver sighed. "This is not where I'm supposed to be, Chance. This is the very last place in Creation I should be but I...I was a fool. To come back here and expect anything to be different."

"What?" He didn't understand. A spectral brush against his back reminded him that they were not alone and...oddly, that bothered him. Dissent turned his head back. "Wait for me outside. I can take care of myself." Vira looked worried for him but went. How touching, that the woman he'd murdered cared for him. He sneered at her back.

"Ghosts?" Heart-Wrought Silver asked in that cool voice. Dissent nodded and wished he could see her face. She frustrated him when all he had to go on was her voice and what passed for body language beneath that shapeless mass of a robe. "I was born here, Chance. And I wanted to...I don't know. See my mother, I suppose. See if there is any truth to my memories of this place. I guess I wanted to see if there was any trace of my existence here."

"How sentimental," Dissent remarked. "The man I used to be was born to House Mnemon. To Mnemon herself, actually. I have no desire to pay a visit to the ancestral manse as it were."

"How does it feel to be back on the Blessed Isle?" she asked. "How does it feel to be home?"

"Why are you asking me these questions?" Dissent countered. "Why are we even talking at all? While I'm at it, why haven't I caved in your skull for your treachery?"

"You jest, to speak of my treachery and not of your own," Heart-Wrought Silver said. Her voice was no longer cool but trembling. She paused to gather herself. Dissent watched, fascinated by the Lunar and the strange feelings she brought up in him. No wonder the Neverborn wanted her dead. They didn't want him feeling anything remotely human anymore. "The answer to all three is one and the same: We're married. I'm your wife."

Dissent took another step toward her and this time she stepped toward him. They met next to the summoning circle. She was so small, he realized. Her eyes would be just about level with his stomach. The Lunar's head leaned back as she looked up at him.

"Take your veil off," he commanded.

Heart-Wrought Silver's gloved hand reached up and pulled her veil down. The silk ran across the features of her face like a river of forest over the most amazing terrain. As it bared her features, Dissent's breath was tight in his chest. Somehow, he'd forgotten how impossibly beautiful she was.

"You know what?" she murmured.

"What?" he said, just as quietly.

"I don't even know your name."

"It's Matthias."

The rage of the Neverborn rose up inside Dissent, stabbing his heart with shocking pain. Agony broke the spell and he recoiled from the Lunar. Breathing heavily, he leaned against a shelf as his body burned with the forbidden name, with the name he'd promised to Them.

"That was the name of the man who was before. But I am the Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace, Lunar. I am a Deathknight in service to the First and Forsaken Lion, to the Neverborn and to Oblivion. Make no mistake. I am your enemy."

"It's wrong, Dissent," Heart-Wrought Silver said, low and urgent. She didn't call him by that lost name, either. Dissent expected her to use the weapon he'd given her but she didn't. "Of all things in Creation, you and I cannot be enemies. I'm your Dragon. Don't you remember? I am for you."

"None of that means a damn thing against the Void," Dissent said, his voice as chilled as his heart. "So, you're here to see your family. Why are you locked in here? I would have at least a few mysteries about you solved before I put you to death."

"Years ago, I made the mistake of going to her and trying to convince her that I was her daughter," Heart-Wrought Silver said, her voice as cool again as his was now. "I was little more than a child then. But she remembered this mark." Her fingers traced the lipstick on her cheek. "Though I was disguised, she recognized it and attacked me. I could not strike her so they took me."

"A little fool in every way," Dissent said, grimly satisfied. "What now? An Immaculate comes to purify your soul?"

"No," Ledaal Vira said as she rushed into the building. "A Wyld Hunt comes to kill every trace of the Anathema here. They're right outside!"

Fervent Dissent darted to the door. He peeked out in time to see an arrow in midflight heading toward the building entrance, preceding a dozen Dragon-Blooded. Almost, he reached out to catch the shaft. Almost, he didn't notice the peculiar fiery Essence pulsing in the arrowhead.

He kicked off the brace of the door and dived across the room as the arrow shot inside, hit the wall...and detonated. Searing fire rushed across his body, setting his magnificent robes on fire and singeing him. Dissent growled in pain and rose, patting the flames out.

Heart-Wrought Silver lay beneath him and on her face was that smile again, the smile he'd only ever seen once. It was a smile of such innocent joy and pure happiness that it just about blinded him. Dissent was confused and honored at the same time...and that's when he realized why she smiled. Heart-Wrought Silver was beneath him. When that arrow came in, the first thing he'd done was cover her. To protect her.

The soulsteel knuckles of Dissent's right hand popped like the clockwork of a First Age Tower breaking suddenly. She jumped a little and got up beneath his glower. "Don't make any assumptions," he said darkly. "Now, we need to get out of here."

"We?" she asked, almost coyly. Dissent restrained his desire to groan. What was it about this woman that brought out feelings of...feelings he'd never felt before? Why did she have to push it in his face, for that matter? She would need killing much sooner than later if she kept acting that way.

"I counted a dozen at least, Heart-Wrought Silver. I may need you to help me cut my way through." Dissent glanced at Vira. "Stay safe." He looked at the Hungry Ghost ...and said nothing. They had an understanding.

"I'm ready," Heart-Wrought Silver said. Moonsilver chains shot out from her sleeves and coiled on the ground. Dissent's eyes narrowed at her artifact weapon and turned back to peer out the doorway. The Dragon-Blooded had disappeared from sight, oddly enough. What were they up to? They could only assail this structure from the front.

"Lingering Whisper is with them." That booming bass from behind could not possibly come from the Lunar. Dissent spun and his skin darkened to the lusterless gray of soulsteel as he activated his Perfection of Earth's Body.

"Heavenly Mother," Heart-Wrought Silver whispered, her head slumping forward. A gigantic golden lion too large to fit materially in this room stood behind her, his tail flicking forth to brush the back of her neck. Dissent's eyes widened as he recognized the significance of a dematerialized Celestial Lion, a God he'd only read about in ancient texts.

"Well, my Dragon. How do you rate such company?" he asked.

"She earned it the first day I met her," the Celestial Lion countered. "And she has proven worthy every day since."

"Bodyguarding a Lunar? Hardly a Heavenly Mandate, now is it?"

"You know...NOTHING of Heaven!" the Celestial Lion roared. Dissent tilted his head to the side as the force of the Lion's breath knocked his hood off and flattened his hair back.

"Your breath stinks of paradise," Dissent growled. "Now, what do you know about the forces outside?"

"They're more than enough to kill you. They have a Toyumato-era Shogunate Essence Canon, Silver," the Lion said, turning its great maned head to the Lunar. "They only need to move it into position."

"How bad is that?" Dissent asked.

"They can blast this whole building apart," Heart-Wrought Silver said. "And us with it. We have to get out of here."

"Stating the obvious," Dissent snarled. He turned away and closed his eyes. Through the Enthralled Chains, he found his link with the Whispers of the Neverborn and his thoughts sped toward Them. | My Masters |

| You mock Our advice and with the same breath you call Us | the Whispers howled in his mind. Dissent bore the pain because he deserved it. | We hear you. |

| I need the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury. I need her to kill an Essence Cannon for me. |

| Your Destiny is not done, Fulcrum Hammer. | The Voices laughed darkly. | You will receive your aid. But remember your purpose! |

"Did you hear me?" Heart-Wrought Silver continued to speak while his concentration returned to the world around him. "I can get us free, if you'll give me what I want."

"I'm touched you care," he said dryly. Dissent wasn't worried in the slightest about that cannon. If the Relentless Maiden didn't arrive in time for some reason, he could evade its attack no matter how big the explosion was. Vira could jump inside him with Mortal-Shadowing Technique and the Hungry Ghost...was more than capable of taking care of itself.

"You are my husband," Heart-Wrought Silver said. She looked faintly repulsed. "Even if you are a monster. I know that saving you from that Essence Cannon will mean more people are going to die, Dissent, so I want something from you."

"And what is that?" Dissent asked, not caring to conceal the amused contempt in his voice. Heart-Wrought Silver thought she could bargain from a position of strength? So she had a Celestial Lion for an ally. He had the Relentless Maiden and he knew which he put his trust in.

"Your ghost."

"No," he said. Vira gasped at the Lunar's words and let out a relieved sigh at his refusal. The sound made Dissent smile. That was more like the broken, submissive Vira he'd built out of his own hands for the past few years. "And she doesn't want to go with you anyway. Why trade one Anathema for another, after all?"

A humming vibration ran itself across Dissent's back, up and down his legs and it made the soulsteel rivets in his hands rattle. He looked out the doorway and saw that they had set up some kind of tripod, one housing a device that looked like a bizarre cross between a ship-mounted firedust cannon and a firecracker. Scores of men and women flocked around it, many of them Dragon-Blooded, and none of them got between the end of the weapon and the building it was pointed at.

"Time's up, Dissent," Heart-Wrought Silver said grimly. "Are you going to stay here and die or will you let me take you out of here?"

"I'm harder to kill than any building," Dissent said. The Lunar blinked in disbelief at his stubbornness and he smirked at her. Inwardly, he wondered. Why wasn't the Relentless Maiden already there? Of course, that fang of people out there was a bit much for even that Dusk Caste.

"But your ghost won't survive," the Lunar said. "You will lose her either way but if you come with me, at least you'll be unharmed." What a fool. How little she understood. On the other hand, he had an opportunity to learn more of her unique powers if he accepted her offer.

"Fine, it's a deal," Dissent said. He strode from the doorway and looked down at his Lunar mate. "Shall we?"

"Dissent, don't let her..." Ledaal Vira protested.

It was too late, even before the ghost spoke up. Heart-Wrought Silver grabbed his hand and her moonsilver chain from the opposite arm smashed into the granite wall. Dissent barely had time to seize Vira before he was improbably pulled, twisted, warped along the length of the chain and out the other side of the building.

Dissent landed heavily on the ground, Vira falling next to him. Heart-Wrought Silver brushed past them both with her Celestial Lion in tow. She looked one way, then another, and then she looked down at him.

"So, you going to lie there all day or do we want to get out of the blast radius?"

He laughed at her fearlessness and rose from the ground. Dissent's soulsteel hands lifted the intangible Vira to her feet as well. The Hungry Ghost stood next to them both, silent as always. Of course it was.

The humming vibration grew stronger and they ran for it. The Wyld Hunt was nowhere near them, owing to their desire to avoid being hit, and Dissent took full advantage of it as he sprinted. He wasn't as fast as any of the others but his strides were longer than theirs and his endurance inexhaustible. They reached the wall blocking the Cynis grounds from the rest of the town below and Dissent looked back just in time to watch the building explode.

His forearm sheltered his eyes but the shot debris stung his soulsteel-like skin. Dissent lowered his arm and gawked slightly at the outright crater in the grounds, roughly twice the size of where the building used to be. That Essence Cannon was comparable to the First and Forsaken Lion's field Siege Guns. He had no idea that the Realm had even one weapon of that power left.

"I cannot stay," the Celestial Lion said, regret weighing his deep voice down. "I cannot break the Law." The mighty spirit dashed through the wall and was gone.

"Lingering Whisper really wanted me dead," Heart-Wrought Silver said. She looked sad as she said it. "I thought we were beyond that."

"I know what I'd do to a man who tried to kill me," Dissent said indifferently. "So, what will it be?"

"I'm not a murderer," the Lunar said, stiffening. "I'm not a monster!" She bared her teeth as she said it and Dissent almost stepped back when he saw they'd lengthened into a set of sharp points. Her eyes turned reptilian and a sheen of gold spread like a passing wave across her skin, there and then gone.

"Look in the mirror," Dissent said. He fixed his gaze pointedly on her mouth. "You might find we're not too different. Now, you can go over the wall and run...or you can stand and fight. I don't know about you but I'm not letting them get away with this."

"That's a full Wyld Hunt, Dissent!" Heart-Wrought Silver gripped his arm suddenly. The feel of her fingers was a heated bliss, like the Spice Tents of the Delzahn. "No, that's more than a full Hunt and they have a Sidereal with them!"

"A Sidereal you say?" Dissent rubbed his chin and grinned. "I've always wanted to match blows with one. The First and Forsaken Lion told me they were the best Martial Artists in Creation."

"It's true," she said.

"Well, I'm the best in the Underworld. Let's see whose style wins!"

Dissent charged away from the wall. He brought up his Earth Dragon Form to match his Perfection of Earth's Body and he knew he was invincible between the two. As shouts went up among the Wyld Hunt, Dissent struck his soulsteel knuckles together and he laughed joyfully at the horror the shrieking metal and its sparks caused among his enemy.

"Hit him with the cannon!"

Two Dragon-Blooded swiveled the Essence Cannon around to point at him. The humming vibration began again...but Fervent Dissent refused to flinch. He snarled at them and poured on the speed, racing to reach them regardless of their gun.

The Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury soared over the other wall like an ill-omened raiton. The slivered mass of soulsteel in her hands howled a sickly green and black, pulsing in time to the burning Anima around her. The Maiden's face was a caricature of rage and all the Dragon-Blooded were far too busy staring at him to see her. That was their doom.

She landed blade-first, bisecting the Essence Cannon. The sword hit whatever Essence reservoirs lay inside the ancient machinery and the gun detonated. As if time had nearly stopped, Dissent saw the white-hot shockwave pick up the Dragon-Blooded and the mortals like dead wood in a flood. In contrast, the Maiden was a suddenly black blur. The explosion passed through her and then she was there again, unharmed in the midst of the second crater on Cynis lands.

"For the Lion!" Dissent cried as he reached the first hunter.

"For his Majesty, the First and Forsaken Lion!" the Relentless Maiden echoed, whirling her daiklave across the back of her hand, wielding it and taking the head off a mortal in a single motion.

Carnage ensued.

Dissent's soulsteel fists pounded through armor, shields and swords to reach his prey. Force of the Mountain empowered each punch and a mortal died with every blow. A Dragon-Blooded came at him and Dissent simply punched him so hard that his body went right over the walls of the Cynis manor.

A Fire-Aspect came at him with twin swords, moving in the familiar patterns of the Fire Dragon Style. What a fool. Dissent knew more about the Immaculate Martial Arts than any Abyssal and he knew quite well how to defend against their techniques. He ignored the Dragon-Blooded's first attack and let the blade scald his side. It did little else since it was plain the Fire-Aspect was hoarding his strength for defense. Instead, Dissent struck with all his fury at the man.

The other sword snapped up and sparks rang from the jade blade. So Dissent hit him again. And again. And again. Each time, the Dragon-Blooded's sword met his hand with sparks. But with each punch, the Dragon-Blooded's Anima flared more hotly and fatigue cracked across his face. Until at last he could counter no more and Dissent killed him with a punch that broke his breastplate, his ribs, pulverized his heart and snapped his spine from the single blow.

Dissent spun about, laughing at the leeched power his hands had pulled from the dying man's soul, before he realized he was in trouble. A literal dozen of Dragon-Blooded ringed him. Beyond the circle, another ring blocked the Relentless Maiden. The Host grinned at him and flames danced from their weapons while smoke billowed from their feet.

"He is a master of the Earth Dragon Style," an Immaculate Monk said. The white jade tetsubo in his hands and the massive build so like Dissent's own marked him as a fellow practitioner. "Which can only mean..."

"That I'm the Heretic," Fervent Dissent said proudly. He flexed his arms and clenched his fists defiantly at the Heavens and their Dragon-Blooded Host. "And I'm stronger than you can imagine!

Dissent lifted his foot and slammed it into the ground, harder than any Immaculate had in the history of Creation. His Hungry Earth Strike cracked the ground open in every direction and he leaped high above the Dragon-Blooded as an eighth of the entire Cynis grounds collapsed beneath his Charm. Two arrows shot out from the crowd below and his Essence-enhanced reflexes twisted him out of the way of each bolt.

He landed in the fallen ruin of the lawn. As he walked out of it, Dissent spotted a Dragon-blooded buried neck-deep in the mess, struggling to get herself free. So he kicked the woman's head off. It spun end over end out of sight, leaving him with the memory of the shocked look on that face. The sight brought a smile to his.

A staff cracked him in the back of the head and the blow almost knocked him out. Dissent fell heavily against the side of the crater and only his fighting reflexes pushed his body out of the way of a follow-up blow. He kicked his foot into the ground and shot backwards, up the crater wall, and came down on his feet.

Staff in hand, a single man stood in the middle of the destruction. He was wreathed in a silvery-gray set of interlocking plates, arranged in some complicated design. The Sidereal, for he obviously wasn't a Dragon-Blooded, had purple eyes on his helmless face. Purple for the color of Saturn, the Maiden of Endings. What kind of powers might one of Her Chosen have?

"That was an incredible hit," Dissent admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "You won't get another."

Somewhere inside of his soul, Dissent felt a sudden pull. He looked away from the Sidereal, back toward walls, and saw Heart-Wrought Silver with her chain wrapped around Ledaal Vira's neck. The ghost struggled feebly against it but was obviously helpless. Anger relit inside Dissent's heart and he jumped the entire length of his crater.

"What are you doing!" Dissent demanded as he charged toward the Lunar, leaving the Sidereal staring incredulously at his fleeing opponent. A body fell across his path and he spared a look backwards. It gave him the chance to watch the Relentless Maiden break a jade tetsubo in half just before her daiklave kept going to cut the Immaculate using it in half too. There was no pleasure on her face, only a deep satisfaction. What a fanatic. She'd been crazy when she was a mortal so she shouldn't surprise him now.

"You gave me your word" Heart-Wrought Silver shouted. "I'm freeing her!"

"You actually thought I was going to give you Vira? You ARE a fool." Dissent stopped up short and shook his head at the Lunar. She was his most prized possession and there was no way Heart-Wrought Silver could break his Void Circle Necromancy. Now that he knew she wasn't going to kill Vira, he could ignore her and get back to killing that Sidereal.

"Dissent, behind you!" Heart-Wrought Silver cried out in front of him. He turned his head to look at her, saw nothing, realized what she'd said and looked back over his left toward the Maiden. There was still nothing to see there. What was she babbling about?

Then that staff cracked into his head again, from the right. Dissent reeled and the staff went between his legs, tripping him and throwing him to the ground. He saw spots now but he'd live. The Abyssal rolled and came back on his feet in time to see the Sidereal sprinting at him, moving really, really fast. Dissent waited, let the staff come...and then he caught it with his Weapon-Breaking Defense Technique. His free soulsteel hand shrieked as the metal tightened into a fist, right before he smashed it into the staff. The silvery-gray weapon snapped in two.

"Damn you!" the Sidereal hissed, throwing the pieces to the ground.

Dissent knocked the Saturn man's fist aside and flinched as some kind of Essence afterimage of the martial artist half-separated from his body and kicked him in the face. Dissent's adversary slammed three fast punches into his stomach but he blocked the following roundhouse kick from the ghostly copy. What was that? It wasn't really a ghost, Dissent had seen enough to know what one looked like. Could it be that the man had mastered a technique for animating his lower soul?

Dissent's soulsteel fists couldn't deliver a Stillness of Stone or Avalanche Method so he kept his hands moving defensively and tried to land a kick to slow the Sidereal down with those Charms. His adversary would have none of it and he spun like a dancer away from every attempt. Dissent grunted as he took a blow for everyone he blocked. Fighting the Sidereal was like fighting two men who only had to dodge for one. He was getting tired of this.

So, Dissent took a full-force kick laden with some painful Charm and tackled the Saturn man. They didn't roll because the Abyssal didn't let them. He used every bit of advantage his extraordinarily tall, heavily muscular body gave him, broken the Sidereal's defenses and then Dissent got his hands around the man's throat.

The Sidereal shouted something incomprehensible just before Dissent squeezed his throat shut. Suddenly, that Essence ghost rose almost entirely out of the man's body. Dissent had just enough time to think of his Ghost-Grounding Blow when the Essence image shouted too. Abruptly, its hands became a hundred and a thousand simultaneous blows landed across every inch of his skin. Dissent was flung skyward by the barrage of hits. Pain wracked him and he knew at once he'd been gravely hurt.

A moonsilver chain caught Dissent in descent.

Softly, gently, Heart-Wrought Silver lowered him to the ground. The vantage point gave him time to appreciate the sight of the Lunar and the Sidereal facing off. It also gave him time to gawk at the river of gore sluiced across the landscape. The Relentless Maiden couldn't use her left arm but only six Dragon-Blooded remained standing...out of two dozen, to say nothing of the hundred very, very dead mortals. A sliver of fear gripped Dissent's stomach at the sight of the Roaring Fury of the Maiden. He was the First and Forsaken Lion's strongest Abyssal because he was a Martial Arts powerhouse, a trained spy and the best Sorcerer, if not Necromancer, in his Majesty's employ. One-dimensional as the Maiden might be, he was nonetheless forced to reevaluate how deadly she'd grown.

"You can't be siding with that blasphemous creature," the Sidereal said as Dissent settled down. The moonsilver chain coiled around his chest protectively and he shuddered at a strange resonance in the Enthralled Chains bound across his body.

"He's my husband, Lingering Whisper." Heart-Wrought Silver had donned her green and gold butterfly veil and she was the same mysterious Sorcerer he'd first met in the desert. Her Anima gleamed around her, a rippling pure purple with white edges. "And you tried to kill me as well."

"Lunar do not belong in Heaven," he said. The purple-eyed man in armor straightened like a proud peacock and leered at her. A magenta halo surrounded him and Dissent had the satisfaction of knowing that he'd forced the man's expenditure of Essence. "Especially not ones so taken with the rut that they'd breed with the dead."

"You're disgusting, Whisper," Heart-Wrought Silver said coldly. "You would make a better Lunar than I. Your bloodlust, your crudity...you're so revolting it's a miracle you still get invited to the Bureau's social functions."

"We're not in the Bureau now, bitch." Lingering Whisper rolled his neck, popping it. "Out here, there's no Scripture of the Crimson Silver, is there? No Luna popping in to see you every year. To think an Incarna would actually see you in person! You're a goddamned blasphemy and, out here, you're fair game."

"Don't they teach you how to kill?" Fervent Dissent groaned as he got back on his feet. His Charms had stopped the Sidereal's Essence ghost from killing him but it hadn't stopped it by much. "Or is the only thing you're good for is talk?"

"Oh, the Heretic himself! Kindly roll over and die like the sacrilegious beast you are. Or do you need another lesson from my Starmetal Soul?"

"Yeah, I think I do." Dissent clenched his fists and took pleasure at Lingering Whispers' flinch when the cracking knuckles rang like half a dozen anvils falling on each other. "Better make it quick. You're running out of toy soldiers."

The Sidereal glanced behind him and Dissent shot straight up into the air. Black and red light skated across the metallic surface of his hands as he brought them together. He dived on Lingering Whisper, fists first, spinning like a top. The Essence ghost rose from his adversary's body and their fists met.

Dissent was thrown backwards, end over end, but he spotted one of Heart-Wrought Silver's chains writhing in the air and he caught the links with his foot. With a feat possible only through his own Black Exaltation, Dissent kicked off the airborne chain, hit the ground in a run, swung down and then up into a magnificent uppercut.

The Starmetal Soul, or whatever it was, burst forth intangibly from the Sidereal's chest and time seemed to slow again. The Essence ghost shouted incoherently as it rained another volley of punches down on him. They hit, they hurt but still his fist came on. The punches stopped going for his body and started concentrating on his hand, trying to halt the inevitable mountain of force heading for the Sidereal's jaw. Dissent gritted his teeth against the pressure of a thousand punches against his one. On and on his fist went, closer...closer. But he couldn't...quite...reach.

Dissent growled low in his throat at the Sidereal's look of complacent glee...and his fingers spread wide, unleashing a hellish-green Crypt Bolt straight through the Starmetal Soul into the man's face.

Lingering Whisper flew backwards, going up and up until Dissent was satisfied the man would land outside of the Cynis grounds. The Abyssal fell to one knee and spat out blood. That Starmetal Soul really hurt. It was a good thing he used the strongest Crypt Bolt he could channel.

"Vira, go make sure he's dead," he said.

A moonsilver chain wrapped around his neck. For a horrific second, Dissent thought the Lunar actually had the nerve to kill him now while he was weak. It would have been a respectable death and one that would have improved his respect for her. Instead, the flame of unnatural Essence seared down the links of the metal and he gasped as he felt Ledaal Vira fade from his mind...only to be replaced by Heart-Wrought Silver's presence.

"You wouldn't let Mother Vira go," Heart-Wrought Silver groaned, sinking to the grass. Her body shuddered in agony. "And even with the Unquenchable Sovereignty Charm, I couldn't break your hold over her."

"That's because Threefold Chaining of the Living is Void Circle Necromancy!" Dissent shouted. "It's impossible to break, you fool!"

"I couldn't break it...but I could move it." The Lunar curled into a tight ball of pain. Dissent watched, wondering if the Necromancy would kill her or not. Ordinarily, that's exactly what it was meant to do; rip the higher and lower souls out of a body and Chain them both along with the corpse. But the Lunar had only snared a third of the connection. He had no idea it was remotely possible so he certainly had no idea if she'd live.

"Why would you do this for me?" Ledaal Vira said, forcing her words into the auditory range for the Lunar. "You're an Anathema. Why would you take my slavery for your own, just to free me?"

"Because, Mother Vira. A long time ago, you helped a little slave girl who'd been victimized during the Carnival of Meeting. You're the one who found a way to get those shoes off of her and it's because of you that she was able to live long enough to be freed, to marry, and to live a grandmother now." Dissent watched the Lunar lying prone on the ground and he sat back on his heels to watch her. The speech exhausted her. He knew that because he could feel her in his mind now.

"I remember her," Vira said. "What was she to you?"

"She was my slave," Heart-Wrought Silver said sadly. "And my only friend when I was a happy little girl named Cynis Sari."

"You're Sari?" Ledaal Vira said, shocked. "You disappeared!"

"Least I could do...for a Monk who saved my best friend." Heart-Wrought Silver slumped to the grass and her presence diminished into an incoherent tangle of dreams in Dissent's mind. He watched her carefully but her life still burned inside of her. Apparently the Necromancy had decided not to kill her after all.

"Thanks for letting me do all the work," the Relentless Maiden said, savagely angry as she staggered in behind him. Her shoulder was split open and her left arm hung loosely at her side, the work of a grimcleaver by Dissent's guess. The Maiden's soulsteel mail was ragged and torn, her daiklave actually battered, but there was exultation in her eyes. The Dusk Caste still stood and the pile of bodies behind them attested to the effort that took.

"There was a Sidereal. I think I killed him." Dissent shrugged and coughed up blood. The Maiden ran a finger across the red stream from his mouth and licked it off her finger.

"You'll live."

"So will you," Dissent glowered. "Vira, go find out...Vira!"

Before his eyes, Ledaal Vira turned transparent. She was already dematerialized but she was...leaving. Actually leaving.

Dissent's heart was gripped by panic and he fell at her knees, trying to grasp her robe. Even with soulsteel hands, he couldn't touch her now. Black rage smothered the fear of loss, suppressed that weakness. She was just a possession, his most valued but nothing more.

"This is goodbye, my old student. Matthias." The radiant glow in her eyes covered up the sting of his forsaken name. "I can hear them, you know. I can hear Pasiap calling me home. His voice is so warm, so kindly. He loves us, Matthias. He loves all of us...even you. And He is not the only one."

"Vira...." Just saying her name was surprisingly difficult. She was really going...and Dissent couldn't let her. "You're the only part of who I was that I still want around. Don't go. I'll see you enthroned as one of the honored dead if you stay. Please." That last word almost didn't make it out of his mouth but he forced it. He'd lost all his power over her and, left with nothing else, all he had was honesty.

"Everything dies, Matthias," Vira said. Her voice was harder to hear now. "Because everything must begin again. I have a new life I'm going to, a life of love in the Light of the Immaculate Dragons. Come with me."

"I can't," he said bitterly. "I'm the Heretic for the rest of eternity, remember? Go and find your 'love' with your snakes. It'll last only until the Void tears the world apart! Go to the light, Vira. Because the next time you see the dark coming...you'll never see anything else ever again!"

Ledaal Vira flickered twice and then vanished entirely. Dissent felt the loss of his teacher as a keening pain quite apart from his wounds. He remained kneeling for a minute before he had the strength to rise again. The Relentless Maiden watched him. He met her eyes coldly.

"The First and Forsaken Lion taught you better," the Maiden said, contempt and incomprehension in her eyes. "She's just a ghost who lost her way. Let her go and get on with your mission."

"I'm going to. Alone."

"That's not what his Majesty ordered me to do," the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury said.

"I'm here to infiltrate the Realm, remember? I can't do that with a Dusk trailing me, especially after this. Our Neverborn Masters wanted this battle to happen, that's why They led me here. But even if we kill every person in this town, news will get out. I need to travel fast and undetected now and I need you to lay a false trail away from me."

"That makes tactical sense," the Maiden said. "Don't get sloppy, Fervent Dissent. You're down to yourself and your Hungry Ghost. I'm glad you don't have the distraction of that...slave of yours anymore. Do what you've been ordered to and I...will do the same." She lifted her daiklave up. It wasn't a salute but it was something.

"Be careful," Dissent said.

She only gave him a look of contempt and disgust as she trotted off. Dissent remembered the first time they met, down in the Southern deserts in a campaign against a fortified town. Even then, she seemed colder than any mortal he'd ever met. Now...there was nothing human left inside the admittedly voluptuous body. No matter how she looked, the Relentless Maiden was nothing more than an instrument of destruction. Unless those rumors of her discreet lusts were true.

"Are you done with this nonsense now?"

Fervent Dissent sighed as the Dusk disappeared from view and he turned to his Hungry Ghost. The Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers shed the appearance of his bodyguard and resumed her rightful form and station. Her porcelain-pale face was veiled in a light green veil, surprisingly similar in color and design to Heart-Wrought Silver's, if not for the transparency. A cloak made from moving raiton feathers stirred about her and she drifted an inch above the ground, seemingly suspended in the air by her robes. A giant umbrella of soulsteel and skin spun out behind her, tiny bells spinning and ringing as she twirled it. Their sound could drive anyone mad...if she chose to.

The Princess Magnificent's eyes were the lustrous green of perfect jade. Black specks crisscrossed their surface like a lattice. Right now, they were filled with more rage and fury than he had ever seen from her.

"Princess," he said, bowing his head and painfully lowering himself to one knee. "The Wyld Hunt is dead, the Relentless Maiden of Unruly Pride and Roaring Fury is gone, and you are free. What do you wish of your servant now?"

"A stomach for finality," she said, still angry. "Why is the Lunar still alive?"

"I'm not sure, honestly." He looked at the sleeping form of his wife. "Threefold Chaining of the Living should have killed her. Either way, she's in my head now." He tapped the side of his head. "If not in life, she'll serve me in death no matter what now."

"Then kill her and be done with it."

"I'm not ready to yet." Dissent stood, against his pain and the astonished rage of the defied Deathlord. "I did what you asked, Princess. I demanded your freedom from He Who Holds in Thrall Himself and He granted it. The First and Forsaken Lion's power over you is gone, Princess. You can build whatever armies you see fit, reconquer Great Forks, do whatever you want."

"What I want is for you to fulfill your Destiny!" she hissed. Her head cocked to the side and her neck snapped from the impossible motion. She did not seem the least bit bothered by it. "I sacrificed much to create you, Fulcrum Hammer. Now do your duty."

"I'm going to," he said, getting angry himself now. "I'm heading right now for the Imperial City. I'm going to take the hearthstone from the Scarlet Empress and turn Creation's Defenses against itself. The Void will get Creation soon enough."

"Kill her!" the Princess Magnificent demanded.

| Kill her! | the Whispers demanded as well. The chorus of voices between them made him dizzy.

"She's more useful to me alive!" Dissent said. The Whispers silenced and the Princess just stared at him. "I can use her and the knowledge of Heaven she has. She was trained in Yu-Shan! She must know many things I don't!"

"Of course she was." The Princess looked down at the unconscious Lunar with unmitigated hate. "She's always been trained there. The Golden Dragon was, even during the Primordial War."

"I never used that name around you," Dissent said warily. Suspicion and alarm vied for his attention and he ignored both feelings. He didn't have enough information to feed either. "How do you know she's the Golden Dragon?"

"Because...the last time I saw her...I strangled her to death." The Princess Magnificent at last looked away from Heart-Wrought Silver. "Because she betrayed ME!"

Fervent Dissent's eyes went wide with disbelief. The snow-like purity of the Princess Skin suddenly tanned, her hair darkening, and the veil disappeared in his mind. At last, he recognized the face of the woman he'd known so long. It was a reflection of one he saw in his dreams...one he'd once worn.

"No...that's not possible..." Dissent backed away from her. "You can't be..."

"Can't be what?" She rose up, her tiny hands lifting the Umbrella of Discord, and the sky turned black in an instant. Darkness fell on them both, darker than a moonless night. "The Deathlords come from somewhere, Dissent. We all do. And some of us remember very well those who betrayed us, those whose treachery is so great that they are not worthy of the Void but instead a cycle of pain, torment and death over and over until Creation dies!"

"You're Taking Chances?"

"Never call me that!" she shrieked. Dissent groaned as her voice spread hundreds of tiny cuts across his body, right through the Lion's royal robes. "I am the Princess Magnificent! And I will not tolerate weakness in you! Kill her!"

Something did not fit together. He missed something. She was far too angry for the situation. No matter her behavior now that she was free, Dissent had watched her for years. Something else was going on. What was it?

Anger can be a reaction to love and fear; he knew that from the Immaculate Teachings. Worthless as the religion was, some of its knowledge was still useful and he applied it. Was she in love? Unlikely. Was she afraid?

Yes. That was it. Dissent studied her carefully, recognizing now the fine lines of tension around her chin and mouth. The Princess Magnificent was angry but she was far more terrified. He'd never seen fear like that before. He was pretty sure he'd never felt it either. Why was she so afraid of an unconscious Lunar? Why did a woman who couldn't hurt her frighten her?

...or could she?

"Talespinner," he said. The Princess flinched at the name and Dissent had his proof. "This is what he discovered, isn't it? Every Deathlord has a weakness, one perfect way to destroy them irrevocably. The fear of it drove you from your shadowland because you believed they knew it...and had it."

"Kill her or I will!" the Princess Magnificient demanded.

"No, you won't." Dissent put his hands on his hips and looked down at the Deathlord, the woman who instructed him in dozens of spells and necromancies, who filled his head with his destiny, and had controlled the direction of his life since he was a teen. "If you could, she'd be dead right now. You're afraid to even touch her. What's the weakness? Her tears? Her love? Her skin?"

"I could still kill you, Dissent," she said. Coldness crept into her voice and the grass around her wilted on the blade from the sound of it. "I have no fear of you."

"What, and ruin the precious Fulcrum Hammer prophecy?" Dissent laughed, showing his contempt. Once he'd loved and respected this woman, or as close to it as he could come. But then she'd made him into the Abyssal he was today and that creature was just as incapable of showing compassion as she was. "You need me, Princess. You won't throw away centuries of work because I won't kill my wife."

"That treasonous creature is NOT your wife."

"She's not yours either!" Dissent snapped. "Stop acting like she is. I have the Resplendent Hammer of Execution now, remember? It's my Anima, not yours. I'm who and what she's married to, not the dead soul of a woman too stubborn to get the idea when Heaven killed her 1500 years ago!" New anger, surprisingly sharp and hot, flowed from somewhere inside. No matter how much distance he'd put between himself and his Immaculate origins, discovering that the Princess Magnificent was one of the reasons the Dragonblooded threw the Solar down killed the last vestige of sympathy for her. Creation made him a monster. She'd chosen to be one.

"You have made your choice," the Princess Magnificent said in a bitter voice. "Even free, I find myself constrained. Very well. Remember your duty, Fulcrum Hammer. Remember your Destiny. Remember it...because there is no other choice for you. There never has been."

The Deathlord's robes and cloak fluttered and then she fanned her Umbrella of Discord. A sudden, biting cold wind snatched her right off the ground. She was a dot within seconds and out of sight seconds later. Dissent watched her go and then looked down at Heart-Wrought Silver.

"I defied a Deathlord and the Neverborn for you. Why? What are you, that you can make me feel this way?" He kneeled next to her and caressed her cheek. Even asleep, she flinched at the touch of cold soulsteel against her skin. Fresh hate blossomed inside of the Abyssal. "So I'm a fool, after all. I saved you for nothing. You took Vira away from me and I saved you...for nothing!"

Dissent slammed a fist into the ground. The grass wilted and died on impact, and a slowly spreading creep of death spread out around him. The Whispery mocking of the Neverborn wound its way through his Enthralled Chains to torment his thoughts. The Princess Magnificent hated the Golden Dragon because she'd once loved him when she was a Night Caste named Taking Chances. Dissent couldn't deny that he hated this woman...but how much of that was genuine? How much of that was anger to conceal how much he cared for and admired her? Heart-Wrought Silver had done a selfless act that promised eternal torture, all to save a dead woman she barely knew. Somewhere inside of him, the bleeding remains of a priest once named Mnemon Matthias saw that...and loved her for it.

The Abyssal lifted his Lunar wife and carried her from the Cynis grounds. Before he reached the border of the property, he wrapped layers of warding and concealing Charms about them until not even the rocks in the walls knew what it was that tread on them. Without sound or notice, Fervent Dissent of the Grave's Embrace left the resort town of Lonesome Thought behind.

He put Heart-Wrought Silver in the woods outside. The veiled Sorcerer's dreams were terrible, wicked scenes of torture and pain, no doubt an expression of the Necromancy that now chained her soul. Dissent could feel his hold on her as he watched her sleep. Could he command her? He didn't know.

| If you don't kill her now, she'll die when you destroy the world. | The Whispers hurt his head with Their words. | Kill her, that you may love her ghost before the End. |

Fervent Dissent snorted at the thought as he left her there and set out toward the Imperial City. The Neverborn speaking of love...preposterous, as preposterous as it was for an Abyssal to think about it. Perhaps it was weakness that stayed his hand, weakness that made him miss Ledaal Vira. In the end, his sentiments were irrelevant, weren't they?

The Prophecy of the Fulcrum Hammer. Dragon’s byblow by a blow, Honor, disgrace and depravity and discontent, War he will bring, against the Pivot Child he stands. Before him life falters, green dies, color fades, With hands that scream, he will bring forth screams, And through them, destine all of Creation to die. A Hinge of the world, upon him fate turns, To light or the darkness he’ll deliver existence, But for him, the choice is already made.

He was the other Hinge of the world, next to the Pivot Child the Neverborn Whispered to him about. Dissent had his screaming hands that brought forth screams. As soon as he laid them on the Scarlet Empress, all of Creation would die and Heart-Wrought Silver with it. He didn't really want to destroy the world, when it really came down to it. But he was the Fulcrum Hammer, like the Prophecy said.

For him, the choice was already made.