SOLAR KNIGHT

The previous evening Azinax had returned to the group's temporary base to find that Kaellatch was missing. At first, this was of no concern. It was quite reasonable that she might slip off to the Arancalen undercity to catch up with old friends, or at least check if she still had any. But now it was mid-morning. Azinax was itching to leave, and there was no sign of her attendant.

"Yo," called out a small voice near Azinax's feet. She looked down into the drainage grate beside her. A pair of reptilian eyes glinted in the darkness.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "We were supposed to leave hours ago."

"I got lost and didn't want to look stupid asking for directions," said Kaellatch.

"Mission failed, then," retorted Azinax as she knelt beside the grate. She reached between the bars with her fingers and pulled it loose. Kaellatch shielded her eyes with one hand as dust and grit fell down on her. With the grate out of the way, Azinax lowered one arm into the drain. Rather than accept this help in its intended form, Kaellatch scampered along Azinax's arm like a gecko up a tree and was quickly at her customary position on Razorfang's back. Azinax glared, but on this occasion there was no malice in it.

"That accounts for everyone," she asserted. "Now then, Micaiah, don't get us lost this time."

The group set off into the wastes with Micaiah leading the way. The rest of the group followed in a cluster behind her. Other than the city there was little to obscure vision this time, so the temple came into view quickly and the presence of a guide almost seemed unnecessary. What started as a smudgy spike on the horizon soon sharpened into a cream-coloured tower enclosed by a ring of petrified trees. To the side of the ring, a smaller smudge coagulated into a campsite, complete with pack animals and cast-iron cook-pot suspended over the ashen remains of a fire.

"Looks like we're late to the party," said Dain.

"It's a rather sad-looking party," observed Micaiah as she inspected the dregs of the cook-pot. Kaellatch dropped down from Razorfang's saddle to join her in searching the camp.

"Something doesn't smell right," Razorfang warned Azinax.

"I know," Azinax thought back. "Stay alert," she warned the others. "Something's not right."

Azinax stalked the perimeter of the camp, her hand on the hilt of her killing-edge. She stopped. Gravel crunched underfoot behind her. Still standing motionless, she watched all four of her travelling companions out of the corner of her eye. The sense of a presence behind her remained, the unmistakeable impression of killing intent.

In a single fluid movement, Azinax pivoted around, drew her sword, and swung. Her blade bit on something solid and a spray of blood rippled into reality, followed by the the corpse of a goblin still gripping a war-pick in midswing, its head hanging by a thread. As it fell to the ground with a lifeless thump, a second goblin materialised on the other side of the camp, only to immediately be shot down with a bolt from Kaellatch's crossbow. At the same time, several figures stood up out of the dust-haze and loosed arrows at the least armoured of the group, Micaiah, only for Razorfang read their intent and dart between them, the arrowheads deflecting ineffectually off his armour. Seeing the fate of their companions and with their initial salvo foiled, the archers began retreating into the wastes.

"Do we chase them?" Razorfang asked Azinax.

"No, I think they know better than to try again without their mage," replied Azinax. Oblivious to this exchange, Kaellatch continued to take pot-shots at the fleeing archers, ducking behind Razorfang's flanks to reload.

"It would have been nice to be able to question one of them," said Dain. "Clearly something's up, and we have no clue what."

"Maybe try that guy," said Kaellatch, pointing to the goblin she had shot earlier. "I don't think he's dead yet."

Dain trudged up to the stricken goblin. As he approached, the goblin rolled over to face him.

"Go to hell, Khalduran," he spat, then fell back limp. Dain nudged the goblin's supine body with the toe of his boot.

"Dead as mutton," he muttered to himself before trudging back to the others.

Back at the camp, Micaiah was staring mournfully at the first goblin's semi-decapitated corpse.

Please don't be a hippy, thought Azinax to herself.

"Now look what you've done," Micaiah admonished the corpse. "If you'd just introduced yourself politely, it might not have come to this. But you just had to be sneaky about it. If you hadn't startled Azinax, she might not have gone directly to violence, and then we could all have been friends together. It didn't have to be this way. You've brought this on yourself, you know."

Remember the mission, Azinax reminded herself. That's what matters here.

Once she had thoroughly convinced herself that the camp was secure and the archers were unlikely to return any time soon, Azinax began searching for a quiet place to focus. She chose the lowest floor of the tower. Inside the tower, a spiral staircase snaked up the walls up to a small platform at the top. There were loops and mounting points for rope handrails, but the rope itself had long since rotted away. The rest of the tower was empty. Azinax surmised that the tower was more of a visual marker so devotees could all find their way to the same place, and that most acts of worship would have taken place outside. But the finer points of the practices of the ancient elves were outside of her purview, and there was something more immediately practical she needed to check.

Azinax sat down on the paved floor of the tower and unfurled her magical senses. Perceiving magic directly was a highly idiosyncratic process and although practitioners could generally be divided into one of two main camps everyone felt it slightly differently. Azinax belonged to the more auditory school. Her own explanation of how it worked, strictly for personal use, was that Phaetusia had opened her ears to the Hymn of Creation, and made an instrument of her soul. Her part in that chorus was not that of the dainty viol or the crooning woodwind, but the deafening chimes of a great bell, ringing out until the world itself was shaken into a new, more satisfactory form. Azinax's magic was percussive. Though it was not her fate or her nature to play sophisticated chords and melodies alone, she could still hear them and participate under the right circumstances, so the ancient rites and wards placed on the tower still rang out to her like a peal from a skilled team of change-ringers, constant and yet constantly changing. Underneath it however was an erratic, atonal crackle, like the crunch of dead insects underfoot. There was a stagnant quality to it.

Outside the tower, everyone else was keeping watch and awaiting Azinax's verdict. Razorfang sat in the tower's doorway, glaring at Dain and Micaiah between sweeps of the horizon as he blocked the entrance with his bulk.

"And they say it's a myth that people look like their pets," said Dain. Razorfang growled at this but did not dare leave his post.

"You shouldn't antagonise him like that," said Micaiah. "He's a coworker, not a pet."

Razorfang stood up and stepped aside to allow Azinax out of the tower.

"The ward of consecration has faded but is still intact," she explained. "It would have been a complex spell to cast originally, but I can reinforce it on my own. Everyone else get out of the way, and I'll start while the sun is still high."

The rest of the group retreated outside the circle of dead trees, leaving Azinax to the work of reconsecrating the tower. Starting in line with the tower and the sun, Azinax drew her second sword, leaving her killing-edge in its sheath. This other sword was the executioner's blade, her symbol of office. Never intended for use in battle, Phaetusian doctrine held that it was a tool rather than a weapon, but for those killed with one it was a distinction without a difference. An engraved inscription along the blade glinted in the sunlight: HONOUR IS A PRIVILEGE OF THE STRONG.

Azinax began circling the tower clockwise, her flat-head held out in front of her with one hand as its square tip traced out the invisible sigils of the holy wards. With her other hand she reached into a pouch at her side and took out a pinch of gold flakes. These she flicked out on alternating sides in time with her rhythmic steps. The rite of consecration for a zodiac temple required twelve circumnavigations of the grounds, one for each celestial territory. This was the way everyone had done it since the Apocalypse War; in some places the practice was said to stretch back even further.

The elvish rite was over-filigreed to Azinax's ears, full of turns and trills that didn't quite justify themselves, but even so she was forced to admit that the end result was robust. It had endured the noxious aura of an Apocalypse Wheel, followed by a millennium of neglect, asking for little in return. As her own inner voice resonated alongside the echos of those long dead the distinctions between individuals fell away, leaving only a choir of past and present singing along to the Hymn of Creation in perfect harmony.

The first eight circuits were easy. As she began the ninth, she began to feel unsteady, the echoes drifted off-key, and her flat-head squirmed in her grip. This was natural. Nine was an inauspicious number. As she completed the tenth circuit, there was a snapping sensation as the ground realigned itself beneath her feet. But things did not get easier. As Azinax marched along her eleventh loop, she began to feel as though some she was towing an invisible mass that only increased as she advanced. At the same time the space ahead also impeded her, pushing gently back even though it appeared empty. She pressed on. A discordant drone thrummed at the edge of her senses. As she began the twelfth and final circuit, the drone intensified. She struggled and raged against it, trying to drown it in the clamour of her own inner voice as the ward's creators lent her theirs across the abyss of time. The short distance from here to the finish line suddenly felt unfathomable. Azinax decided she didn't need to fathom it to cross it. The drone reached a fever pitch. The ground looked flat and dry but every step felt like it was though a viscous bog. A stagnant smell filled her nostrils. Just as she was about to reach the spot in front of the tower's entrance where her journey both ended and began, something exploded behind her eyes, flashing light and dark. The rite's song evaporated, displaced by indefatigable noise.

After the flash there was nothing but noise. After the noise there was nothing at all.