SOLAR KNIGHT

Nax? Nax!" Azinax ignored the voice calling her name. "NAX!"

She manoeuvred so that half of her body was hanging off the pallet and searched across the floor with one foot. The smooth texture of the tiles gave way to the coarser one of wood, and she kicked down hard on the hatch door.

"Kal!" she called out. "Go deal with it!"

"Deal with what?" asked Kaellatch, her voice muffled.

"Beats me," said Azinax. "Go ask Moira. She's the one who won't shut up."

"I heard that," interjected Moira from the next room.

Azinax felt something pushing against her foot and retracted herself back onto the pallet. She had not opened her eyes once during this entire exchange.

Kaellatch shoved the hatch open and emerged into a repurposed storeroom at the back of Dagiac's temple to Phaetusia. She glared vaguely in the direction of Azinax's prone form.

"Get up and put some clothes on," she admonished.

"Not like you can see squat with the skylight open anyway," retaliated Azinax.

"I can make an educated guess," said Kaellatch.

"Nax! Kal! Someone, anyone!" Moira called out again. "I don't care who, just get over here!"

"What is it?" Kaellatch yelled in the direction of the door as she tossed Azinax's clothes over her.

"Come here and find out!"

Kaellatch located the lower doorhandle by feel and scampered out to the foyer. The main hall of the temple of Phaetusia was all glass windows and gold-inlaid wood, with every walkway flanked by sandstone warriors and canines. Standing over the entire ground floor was a rendering in white marble of Phaetusia herself, with details picked out in platinum. Suspended from the ceiling by wires, her gold-plated halo flickered with everlasting flame.

Kaellatch made out two figures near the entrance-way and deduced that one of them was Moira. Her suspicions were confirmed when she got closer and heard her having a discussion with the visitor in a far more restrained tone than the one she had been using earlier.

Moira was a slight elf woman with hair that gleamed like spun copper in the light, which she kept tied back in a sensible bun. She was engaged in tense debate with a kenku in the austere uniform of the Dagiac civil service.

"Just give it to me, and I'll make sure she gets it," inisisted Moira in a tone that suggested that this was far from the first time she had made this request.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," drawled the kenku in a nasally voice. Kaellatch looked up at the two of them expectantly.

"What about Kaellatch, then?" suggested Moira. Kaellatch drew back a little. "She's technically Azinax's employee, and they're more or less joined at the hip whichever way you slice it."

"Only the intended recipient of the ...missive... can take possession of the ...missive," asserted the kenku. Most of the sentence was in a brash, masculine voice, except for the word 'missive' which was uttered in a querulous whine.

"Hey Nax!" called Kaellatch in as loud a voice as her tiny body could muster. "You got bird mail, and you know what they're like!"

"Give Kal the damn message!" yelled Azinax from the other side of the temple.

"Only the intended recipient," repeated the kenku. Between their inflexible faces and piece-wise speech, kenku were often difficult to read, but Kal sensed this one seemed apologetic.

Clad in the clothes that Kaellatch had thrown at her earlier, Azinax staggered out of the back room and into the foyer to meet the group waiting for her, slinging the scabbard of her flat-head haphazardly over her shoulder as she went. The kenku looked her up and down, then reached into a satchel and handed over an envelope.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" the kenku cooed in a reassuring, motherly tone. Azinax stared at the kenku, totally unimpressed, then traipsed off back to the rear of the building to read her letter.

"Sorry about that," said Kaellatch. "I'd give you a tip but I don't have any cash on me. I can try to give you some new words, though. Hold on, is it wrong of me to even suggest that?"

If the kenku was offended there was no indication of this, though their avian features were naturally inexpressive. As they turned to leave they paused a moment, apparently considering the offer. They looked down at Kaellatch, their head tilted slightly askew.

"Bad words?" the kenku asked plaintively in a child's voice.

"You probably know all the obvious ones, but I reckon I can give you something novel," said Kaellatch, taking this as an invitation. She took on a wide-legged stance. "Worm-forsaken drill-bit!" she then thundered in the most aggressive tone she could muster. "Gnat-fearing goon! Sleepy-eyed son of a spider-louse!"

"Worm-forsaken," the kenku repeated in Kaellatch's voice, and nodded appreciatively. Kaellatch and the kenku then went their separate ways, the kenku striding off to other duties and Kaellatch returning to the storeroom. Moira had already left as soon as she could, and was up in the rafters checking the fastenings on the wires that suspended marble Phaetusia's flaming halo.

Azinax sat on the floor, opened the letter, read it, and then read it again. She locked eyes with Kaellatch. When Azinax was sitting down and Kaellatch was standing up, their heads were almost level.

"Get packing," said Azinax. "We're going to be out of here before noon. Next stop, Rugac."

m s s s n

8 M. Talundri 1003 AAW

Nested in the centre of a patchwork of pastures and smallholdings, Rugac was the unofficial gateway into Essokia. There was no sharp boundary to speak of; the transition from grassland to close-packed urban sprawl was smooth and continuous. Azinax left Razorfang to find his own way forward, and he lumbered down the streets impervious to the jostling of pedestrians. Any guard geese or over-ambitious traders who dared stray into his path were batted away with an enormous, imperious paw.

"They put everything back together so quickly," remarked Kaellatch.

"You can still draw a line where they passed through, though," said Azinax, pointing to one of the taller, more precarious buildings. The walls of the ground floor, thoroughly adorned as they were with trinkets and overgrown with vines, had two circular patches on either side that had been patched up with a rougher, cheaper make of brick.

With Razorfang reaming a path through the streets, it was not long before the thronging crowds thinned out and they arrived at the inner city. This district was protected by a circular ring of pale stone walls, and the architecture within was far more orderly and understated. Tasteful villas lined up politely along wide cobbled streets with almost no one on them. Azinax sat up with the bald confidence of someone who definitely belonged there as Razorfang loped down the empty avenues.

The group's destination was enclosed within another set of smaller walls made of similar material to the first. These were unlikely to deter determined intruders on their own, but presence of any wall was enough to keep honest people out. There was no signage except for a single plaque: 'ESSOKIAN MILITARY. KEEP OUT'.

Azinax rapped on a small door built into the wall.

"Name and business?" a voice on the other side of the door asked without delay.

"Tell Brent it's Azinax," Azinax replied.

"Wait here." Footsteps on the inside receded away into the distance. Azinax leaned on the wall to one side of the door while Kaellatch found a spot in the shade of an implausibly neat tree swaddled in bird nets.

Eventually the door opened again. Azinax pushed herself off the wall back to a vertical posture and stepped through it. Kaellatch scampered up to the doorway as well, but when she tried to follow Azinax into the softly lit room beyond the hobgoblin who had opened the door obstructed her with his foot.

"No plus-ones," he said.

"Don't start any fights you can't finish without me," quipped Azinax.

"Same to you," said Kaellatch as the door slammed in her face. She glanced about at her sterile surrounds, and then at Razorfang.

"Any idea how long she'll be?" she asked. Razorfang shook his head. "Let's get out of here, then."

Once they were back into the bustling streets of the outer city, Kaellatch felt much more at ease. She did draw a few confused looks; a lone kobold in full daylight riding a worg was certainly noteworthy, but not noteworthy enough to do anything about other than keep out of the way. Razorfang swatted an especially foolhardy goose, then came to a halt outside a building with much more subdued décor than its neighbours. It had large open windows that afforded good airflow and had brightly coloured awnings that were currently retracted. An elf was sitting inside by the north window, embroidering a design onto the sleeve of a shirt. She looked up and waved to Kaellatch.

"Yo," said Kaellatch as she waved back before clambering down Razorfang's side. "What's cooking?"

"Aside from the mushroom soup on the stove, not much," said Sarrai, packing away her embroidery.

"Gross," said Kaellatch. "Although that's probably a good thing. Most news is bad news these days, so no news looks good by comparison. I guess there's nothing doing in Arancalen, then?"

"As a matter of fact, word is Jim finally got his way, and his claws on some eggs to boot," said Sarrai. "If you believe the doomsayers, the place is probably worm castings by now."

"Yikes, I hope not."

"They've got couriers out there these days, so if the whole place collapsed, we'd hear about it pretty quickly. I'm sure the Caernclaws are fine."

"Easy for you to say," snapped Kaellatch. "You weren't there when it all went down the first time. I find it very hard to believe any of them have learned anything."

"Their wyvern hasn't eaten any tourists yet," pointed out Sarrai. "Everyone said it would, and then it didn't."

"That's because they shove half a cow down its throat every time they see any coming," retorted Kaellatch, as though this were patently obvious. "That's Monster Taming 101."

Sarrai smiled and shrugged. "Don't knock it if it works!"

m s s s n

Navigating Brent's office was a task in itself. Tomes, utensils, and other bric-a-brac were all scattered over the desk and shelves, overflowing onto the surrounding floor. A pendant, a disk divided into twelve segments labeled with the symbols of the zodiac gods, hung on a repurposed hatstand along with several other talismans. The only well-ordered object in the entire room was an idol of Antekasmai the owl god on the desk, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and surrounded by an oasis of clear space. Brent himself, a limber, long-fingered hobgoblin with a retiring demeanour was shrunk into his chair, completely overawed by Azinax's oppressive aura.

Azinax tried to push aside some debris in an attempt to reach a chair of her own.

"Don't touch that!" snapped Brent, provoked out of his state of paralysed hypnosis by this act of brazen disrespect. Azinax glared, but restrained herself and stepped back.

"As an agent of the Light that Blinds and Reveals, I acknowledge the auspices of the Stygian Seer," recited Azinax.

"As an agent of the Stygian Seer, I submit to the gaze of the Light that Blinds and Reveals," recited back Brent.

Silence followed. Azinax shifted in place while Brent alternated his gaze between her and the floor. His mouth moved silently as he parsed out sentences in his mind.

"Why did you summon me?" prompted Azinax. "My understanding was it was some matter about the Tome of Antekasmai, but I thought we were done with that."

"W-well it turns out we're not." This caught Azinax's attention. "The sages were reviewing the texts, and it turns out that there was one final instruction that we missed," Brent went on. "It wasn't until the other tasks were carried out that it became clear what was meant."

"So what is it, then?" demanded Azinax, barely constraining the urge to shake her mission out of Brent rather than let him explain it at his own pace. The only thing holding her back was the knowledge that interupting him would only make it all take even longer

"The final task is to reclaim and reconsecrate a specific zodiac temple that was lost to the wastes," explained Brent. "According to reports from our scouts, it's just on the outskirts of Arancalen. They didn't tell me all that much, I'm afraid, and I suspect it's because they're just as much in the dark as we are. The temple area is apparently over-run with monsters, so they didn't get a good look at the inside. I did manage to arrange for the locals to lend you a guide, though. You'll be able to meet up with them in Baystone and they should know more about the situation there."

"What do we know about this guide?" asked Azinax. "If the temple is as dangerous as you claim, then I can't afford to waste time baby-sitting some weakling."

"They said they'd send someone appropriate to the job," said Brent. "Look, I've put a lot of work into this, and everything is hinging on it getting done right. You're going to follow my plan and like it! You were nowhere after that fiasco with Tellius, you had nothing, you were nothing! You're lucky I even considered having anything to do with one of his old cronies!"

It's just as I suspected, thought Azinax. He only called me in because when he asked for a volunteer to step forward, everyone else had the good sense to step back.

Brent broke off his rant wearing the expression of a swimmer just realising that the currents had swept him out of his depth. Azinax hadn't moved, but the atmosphere had nonetheless suddenly turned venomous.

"So to make this clear," said Azinax, "you want me to meet up with your guide in Baystone, follow your guide through the wastes to Arancalen, clear out the temple of squatters and pests, and reconsecrate it in the name of the pantheon?"

"Y-yes," stammered Brent.

"Then I take it this meeting is over," said Azinax.

"There is just one more thing to cover," added Brent. "The small matter of compensation."

"Kaellatch handles my finances," she said flatly. "I'd tell you to take it up with her but your staff wouldn't let her in."

m s s s n

10 M. Talundri 1003 AAW

Baystone was much quieter than Rugac. A port town right on the Essokian-Khalduran border, it had grown wealthy through trade and suffered deeply when international tensions had caused that trade to dry up. But those tensions had now eased, and those who had endured were now back in business.

Azinax scanned the tables of the inn, trying to identify who her contact might be. Most of the patrons were human and good at minding their own business. A pair of drow ensconced in a corner were having a heated discussion in sign language, but otherwise none of these strangers looked especially worthy of her attention.

"I'll have a half-measure of whatever's in that bottle up the back with the dimples and the stopper that looks like a funny hat," said Kaellatch to the inn-keeper as she stood up on a bar stool. He poured her a shot of something brown. Kaellatch held it out to Azinax.

"Sniff it," she instructed. Azinax sniffed.

"Smells like something you'd use to get rid of stains," said Azinax. Kaellatch drank it and pulled a face.

"Tastes that way too," she remarked. "I don't know what I expected."

"You'd be easy to poison," said Azinax. The inn-keeper hung over the conversation like a bad smell, listening warily. Finally a dark-haired, cadaverous-looking elf approached with a dwarf in slit-eyed goggles in tow. They hadn't been there when Azinax arrived, and she hadn't seen them enter. It was as if they had stepped out of nowhere.

"I'm guessing you're Azinax?" asked the elf.

"Not many other Phaetusian worg knights in Baystone, last time I checked," said Azinax.

"I've never met a Phaetusian worg knight before, so I wasn't sure what to look for," said the elf. "Other than the worg, obviously. He's very cute, by the way."

"I've got a flat-head on my back and a killing-edge at my side," said Azinax. "What else could I possibly be?"

"I'm sure you could be any number of things," said the elf. "But we still haven't been formally introduced. My name is Micaiah, and my new friend is Dain Giltflame. I'm making a lot of new friends today."

Now that she knew what her guide looked like, Azinax did her best to tune out her ramblings to focus on the thought that was nagging at her. Something about the dwarf's name rung a bell.

"Name's Kaellatch," said Kaellatch, holding out a tiny clawed hand. Micaiah shook it. Her companion still had not reacted. He just stood behind her with a gormless, beatific expression, his gloved hands clasped in front of him. He had the air of someone who was either dumb as a brick or wanted everyone to think he was. No one except possibly Micaiah was buying it.

"What's his deal?" Azinax asked Micaiah, pointing to Dain.

"Oh, he's coming with us up to Arancalen, aren't you, Dain?" said Micaiah. "Safety in numbers is so nice to have, not that I need any more of it, and it is so nice to have people to talk to on the road."

"People as opposed to..." Kaellatch prompted, but Micaiah ignored her. Finally Dain appeared to notice Azinax glowering at him, having finally remembered how she knew him.

"I'm guessing your superiors didn't tell you I'd be along for the ride," he said to her.

"First of all, strictly speaking none of them outrank me. The formal Essokian military and each of the zodiac priesthoods all have their own separate hierarchies and no meaningful comparisons can be made between them," said Azinax pointedly.

"They're giving orders and you're taking 'em," said Dain. "I don't care how the bureaucracy sausage gets made."

"Second of all, you're supposed to be dead, never mind working for the government."

"And yet here I stand, very much alive and at your service," taunted Dain, giving a mock bow. "We can only guess at which of us is Phaetusia's favourite."