SOLAR KNIGHT

Regaining consciousness was a multi-step process. At first she was vaguely aware of being somewhere quiet and indoors, with no other cognisance of her situation or of any real impetus. Then the rest of her faculties returned piecewise and Azinax realised she was in one of the old refurbished buildings of Arancalen. At first she continued to lie still; however long she had already done so, it did not feel long enough. A spiritual and physiological debt not yet fully paid off weighed down on her. However, despite her best efforts wakefulness was now fully upon her. Boredom followed soon after.

Azinax pushed herself into a sitting position and propped herself up against the headboard, hunched amid the bedsheets. Although by now she had been awake for several minutes this was the first time she had really looked around. She was in a bedroom of one of the Arancalen houses, possibly even the one the group had waited out the storm in earlier. It was clear that the room had been decorated by at least two different people with wildly divergent tastes in interior decor if the gaudy curtains and delicately carved ornamentation on the bed were any indication. Such an arrangement would be no surprise in light of Arancalen's inevitably cosmopolitan demographic composition courtesy of being sited at the centre of a fuzzy international border.

Azinax realised that her wounds had been cleaned and bound, including some she barely remembered receiving. The last thing she remembered with confidence was Dain fleeing into the city, and she rued the decision to spare him despite believing it to be in accordance with Phaetusia's wishes. Everything after that was a confused blur. Things definitely did happen, but she struggled to articulate any of them in words. She racked her brains as best she could but this failed to produce any conclusive results beyond a distant memory of Kaelatch fussing and squawking. The source of her distress was unclear but had felt like an over-reaction at the time. Hindsight suggested it might not have been.

She stood up. Her swords had been laid out at the foot of the bed, and the killing-edge had been cleaned. As she stalked over her legs felt strange, fragile rather than painful. She took up her weapons, knowing that a Phaetusian priest with no swords was worse than naked.

Once suitably equipped she slid open the door and stepped out, only to trip on an unexpected obstacle loitering on the threshold. A lithe shadow scuttled out of the way as she fell. Then she was back on her feet almost at once, her hand reaching for her sword, but she relaxed as she recognised Kaellatch who by now was apologising profusely.

"Calm down, I'm fine," she told her. "Pull yourself together." At this Kaellatch terminated her pleas of contrition with a long-suffering groan.

Azinax took in the scene in front of her. This was the main living area and she was now confident that she was in a different building from the one she had stayed in the night before. The room was lush with vivid soft furnishings and well lit by afternoon light streaming in through the north window. Most of the open space in the room was taken up by Razorfang, sprawled in a state of repose on the rug with Micaiah sitting leaning up against him. Both immediately sprang to attention as Azinax entered the room, as did another elf Azinax didn't recognise seated by the window.

"You had us worried for a bit back there," said Kaellatch. "You can go now," she then addressed the other elf, who backed out of the room hastily, fixing Razorfang with a stare of barely-constrained terror all the while.

"Who was that?"

"Just someone who was helping out."

"If you say so." Azinax then addressed Micaiah. "You look deader than usual."

"That's a very insensitive thing to say," replied Micaiah, "although after last night I suppose you've earned the right to a few off-colour remarks."

Azinax didn't reply to this immediately. She took a moment to put her thoughts in order before voicing them. "I fail to see how I earned anything," she said at last. "All I did was try to throw all our lives away in a mad dash for revenge that wouldn't even have worked if it weren't for Kaellatch springing out of nowhere at the last moment. It was a shameful display of emotion triumphing over common sense."

"Though you might not have been thinking of Arancalen at the time, your actions still saved it," said Micaiah. "If we hadn't challenged Tellius directly, he would have attacked the city with the dragon construct he stole."

"He said so himself," interjected Kaellatch.

"Even if the wyvern had still defeated him," Micaiah then went on, "which it might not have without the advantage of surprise, a fight in the city proper would have been disastrous."

As much as it galled her Azinax saw no fault in this logic. Regardless of her true intent the end result of her irascible charge after Tellius had been a boon to Arancalen. Part of her would have preferred for Micaiah to be angry with her risking both their lives in so reckless a fashion, but she had been willingly to blithely accept such treatment on this occasion in light of the outcome. Azinax had been eager to match hostility with hostility but with none forthcoming she was left flatfooted.

She changed the subject. "Has anyone seen Dain Giltflame today?"

"One of the worm-handlers might have," said Kaellatch. "He mentioned a dwarf he didn't recognise in the zodiac shrine. Was moving like he was hurt, wanted to know what sort of offering the Crawling Tyrant might like. Not sure what he expected there. After that he managed to sweet-talk his way into tagging along with a group of traders headed towards Stoneshrift." Stoneshrift was a town at the entrance of the mountain pass that led into Khaldur. "They left this morning."

"Good riddance," decreed Azinax. "I hope I never hear from him again."

Since it was too late in the day to attempt the ritual a second time, they passed the rest of the day in Arancalen in relative quietude. On the occasions Azinax ventured outside she drew curious looks from the townspeople, mostly elves, though none dared engage her in conversation. One man approached her and appeared to be gathering the courage to speak, only to spook at some imperceptible threat and shuffle off. This sort of treatment from strangers suited her. Later, when she retreated back to the house she found that someone had laid out a repast of fresh bread accompanied by imported meats and fruits. She handed the meat off to Razorfang and took the rest for herself in the seclusion of the back room. No one bothered her there and so she spent the evening left to her own devices.

18 M. Talundri 1003 AAW

The next morning came soon enough, and not long after that the small group found itself back at the temple grounds. The site of the battle with the dragon construct was obvious in the light of day. A long trench scarred the ground where the soil and scraggy plants had been incinerated to sterile dust by the dragon's negative energy beam. Tellius's corpse on the other hand was conspicuous by its absence; only a smear of gore near the entrance to the tunnel remained.

"I may have tipped off the couriers' guild about Tellius," volunteered Kaellatch. "I didn't think they believed me, but I guess they checked anyway."

When they were satisfied as to the relative safety of the area they once again gathered outside the tower. The makeshift camp they had found there days earlier had been completely packed up with nothing left to suggest it except for the ashes of the campfire, halfheartedly smeared out and mixed with the surrounding earth. Once again the others took up position at a fair distance out of the way, and once again Azinax began her circumnavigation of the ward. Twelve loops, one for each celestial territory. That was the rule. Naturally one started with one's own god. Thus the first was for Phaetusia, the Light that Blinded and Revealed. The second was for Zuno, the Obsidian Artist. Then Antikasmai, the Stygian Seer. Callistachia, the Weaver of Plots. Lagyron, the Crimson-winged Psychopomp. Aejura, the Mercurial Traveller. Talundros, the Gloaming Judge. Ursarctura, the Slumbering Mother. Vermelle, the Crawling Tyrant. Arkos, the Ocean's Maw. Temerarius, the Implacable Warden. Then finally Kerata, Shiress and Nezumiiro, the Mutable Ones.

Taking all three serpent gods together, as was tradition, that was twelve. And yet, somehow, the ritual was incomplete. Though nothing within the ground was trying to force her out this time, Azinax found herself with the opposite problem. The ancient artifice and the voices of its long-dead orchestrators were refusing to let go. She was still tethered. She tried to feel her way through the residual enchantments in the hopes of teasing out some clue as to what to do next. The efficacy of this was limited; in a certain sense there was nothing new to see here. The rite was just as incomplete as it had been several loops ago. But even so, something else called out to her.

First of thirteen stars.

She began a thirteenth circuit. After she set forth once more, Azinax discovered that this section of the ward's construction was indeed different. It was hesitant, off-kilter, like the original creators were singing along to a song they barely knew in a language they didn't understand. The melody felt flaky, cargo-cultish, and yet somehow it cast everything that preceded it in a new light and strengthened it. As Azinax drew to the close of the final leg of the ritual, words sprang unbidden to her mind like thunder from a clear sky. First chorister of the Hymn of Creation. Sole witness to perfection. Zuiichi, Emperor of Heaven's Wheel. Then as the ward's silent melodies reached a crescendo, there came an abrupt snapping sensation as the ritual seemlessly, politely ejected her influence and the renewed ward settled into place.

She stood for a moment, alone under the bleak winter sun. Then she waved the others over.

"It's done."

"That's it?" asked Kaellatch. "After all that, we finally achieved what we set out to do?"

"Apparently."

"Now what?"

"We head back into town, pack up, and go home."

Kaellatch glanced warily at Micaiah, who had still not been let in on the specifics of Azinax's secondary mission and her subsequent rejection of it. "I hope you've got a plan of what you're going to do when you get there," she whispered to Azinax.

"If you're worried about Brent, then, well, don't be!" proclaimed Azinax, making no attempt at subterfuge. "To the devils with him! He had no right to make such a demand and I never formally agreed to it anyhow. I can't break a promise I never made. He'll just have to wear it." Though Azinax was doing nothing to prevent her from listening in, Micaiah nonetheless heard none of these bold assertions on a conscious level. Her attention was locked heavenward. As she watched a vulturine aarakocra descended out of the sky and dropped down to earth several yards away, his wingbeats raising up clouds of dust as he landed. His inflexible avian face was difficult to read as he approached, but his deportment showed no indication of overt hostility.

"I have a message for Azinax," he announced.

"That would be me," said Azinax, unperturbed.

"How can I be certain?"

"Shouldn't you have planned for that earlier?" she rebutted. "And how many Phaetusian worg riders do you think there are around here?"

"Fair point," conceded the aarakocra. "Anyway, someone wanted very badly for you to get this message as soon as possible." He took a rolled-up missive out of his satchel and handed it to her. Then he shot a knowing look at Kaellatch, who smiled back toothily. "Be seeing you." His work done, the aarakocra elaborated no further and flew off.

Azinax checked the seal on the letter, which bore the emblem of the Order of the Worg Riders of Phaetusia. The seal emitted a spark of holy energy as she broke it before reading the message inside:

Syr Azinax, I hope that this letter finds you well and that the reconsecration of the wasteland temple has not proven too difficult. From what I heard it was supposed to be a walkover but you never know with these things. Worrying developments are afoot in the western fiefs but I dare not elaborate except in person. Come directly to Castle Phaeton and I will lay out the whole thing. I know you have nothing better to do assuming you're done rotting and brooding over that undeserving wretch Tellius. In all seriousness though I suspect I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Remember that Phaetusia trusts your judgement even if others don't.

– H. P.

Azinax handed the letter to Kaellatch. "What do you make of it?" she asked once Kaellatch had had a chance to skim over it.

"In an absolute sense, it's very concerning," said Kaellatch. "The Wolf Mother isn't the kind to go around asking for help from anyone. On the other hand, it neatly solves the Brent problem. Whatever this is he's not going to want anything to do with it."

"Astutely put," agreed Azinax. "So that settles it. To Castle Phaeton, without delay!"