SPIREFALL - Forever Tumbles Down.

[Kobra]

STILLED, THE PESTILENT ENGINES

Silence reigns. In the weeks, the months, following the death of the Dealer of Words, the Spires, too, have slowly faded into quietitude.

Foul smoke, once a gushing tide of celestial vomit, slowed to a stream, then a trickle. Finally, not with a bang but with a whisper, it stopped altogether.

Flanks which once heaved and glistened with hideous, fleshy mechanisms, cogs and wheels and organs and piston-like tendons working in tandem to pour the awful mass ... now silent, now frozen; dark and hard, their secretions dried, mummified, petrified, fossilised into a glossy tower...

An obsidian finger thrust accusingly at unresponsive heavens.

Even the noises from below the earth; the industrious clamor and the sinister, sequacious rumblings that followed along paths between the fell spikes have become but a shuddering memory. Only grim stillness haunts these lands now.

Oh, still the forests rot; still the decay clings to them, where the disease and madness of the Spires had spread like scabs crusting about a bleeding wound. But no longer does the spread continue; no longer does the contagion bloat its influence ever further out. Now the stench deep within the woods is of animal-flesh baking in the sun, of maggots tearing asunder softening tissues, of plant-matter breaking down into the parasitic soils.

No longer, even, does the odd traveller, the woodsman, the farming peasant, vanish from hearth and home or lonely road and fade from the memories of those who had known them.

The predations have ceased. The Spires are as dead rock. The gibbering cries of the Darkness no longer felt within the nerves of the dreaming and the damned.

Is it over?

[Kobra]

The wind pours across broken blades of rock-that-is-not.

Nox triumphans...

The wrath of nature, the dragon's command, has ceased. Vented arbitrarily, and with perverse irony, it took one bloated beast but moments to act upon an ill feeling and cast down the emblem of terror that had confounded Myrken Wood and all its persons for what had seemed like forever.

Down, down, tumblers of petrified maleficence. Befouler of piety, cursed and hated thing, die, ye eater of hopes, ye vomitous spout of filth. Leech, Abomination, Sky-Rapist, Blighted Phallus of the Night-Gods. Bleed and suffer. As we did for you.

As the great storm's gale tore at the atrocious substance, once heaving, once slick and running with the juices of perverse artifice, withstood all attempt to destroy it in stony silence. Petrified, its hardened chitin scarcely responded for those first harrowing moments. It may have seemed that the Spire, even in death as it was, laughed at all the might and pomp wrought against it to no avail.

Yet at last there was a whispering hiss as the first chunks of crystalline gravel ran down the edges of one vein-like coil. As if some terrible spirit had at last relinquished its grip, and left the Spire to its fate, all at once the resilience of the thing abated, and with a terrible, sundering crack, a thrown tree pierced the Spire like a bough driven into an abandoned ant-hill - like a spear thrust into the side of a dying savior.

Down the first flank came; sloughed off in a single great shard. Splintering further as it fell; shattering and flattening trees as it crashed to the earth.
The Spire's innards, coiled like intestines, ribbed like the gullet of a terrible throat - or like unto some other, less polite organ conjured by sultry-minded comparison - were at last bared to the air they had so long despoiled.

Without its bracing force the second part was quickly snapped away, falling back over itself and impaling the soft flesh of the earth, propped upright against its own base like some standing-stone left by civilisations ancient and long-gone.

At last, the Spire fell silent beneath the winds; in mere instants brought to ruin, and with it, the myth of the Spires' invulnerability, and the sheer hopelessness of their overbearing presence ripped away. Myrken Wood can breathe again; its oppressors are as mortal as inanimate objects can be.

And as the great North Spire went down, the Northern Path - the thinner, smaller spires that led inexplicably north like the points of some monster's vertebrae all tumble against each other and like dominoes crumble to the earth.

But where the great one, the northmost of the Triangle that surrounds Broken Dagger and its lands, is sundered open? There, a monolith-circle of its broken walls...and there, in their midst, a gaping chasm, marked by spinal coils that serve almost deliberately as stairs.

Leading down.

Into the dark beneath.

[Kobra]

TEMURIA

Altan Temur, the Prince of Golden Iron, sat upon his bed in the Palace Tower. Drapes of finery tickled his brawny shoulder. Soft sheets lay beneath his thighs.

His head hung almost between his knees, his hands lain there lifelessly, helplessly.

The sheets still smelled of her.

His thick, calloused fingers rubbed the silky fabric between them. Drank the fragrance of his Queen into his skin. For a moment, here, in the silence, he could pretend she was here, and forget what was happening outside.

But the sweet scent was slowly overborne. The stench of bleeding and of burning. The sounds of screams drowning out her whispers. She wasn't here.

The Enemy was.

Rising, Altan pushed himself to the window, hesitant fingers, trembling with a fear unknown to the warrior conqueror, brushed aside the drawn drapes to reveal the entire atrocious spectacle to his eyes.

Why are you looking? You know what you'll see.

Temuria.

Her valleys, stretching into the hazed distance, kissed with deep green grasses rolling in the winds borne down into them, between the white-clasped peaks of the great mountains beyond. The Great Lake, shimmering like a glassy jewel, and Gate Isle its silvery crown. Her people - his people - toiling verdant fields, riding amidst the forests, laughing in the streets of the villages -

Then the vision was stripped away, and he saw Temuria.

See her as she is now.

The earth was cracked and bleeding; whether the world's own blood or that of the thousands of men who had died, trampled into the dying grass, his hazed mind could no longer tell.

The skies burned with a foul and pestilent reek. He knew its source; he could see them out every window, in every direction.

Spires. Black knives driven to cruelly scrape the sky's underbelly, and scratch into its quivering womb a bloody message - lines of orange fire were drawn into the heavens, forming a spiderweb of daemonic sigils between each of the terrible towers. They encircled the Great Lake, now a roiling mass of bubbling ...something...he dared not guess what, but it was no longer water.

Gate Keep was the dead centre of the foul emblem, and there, where the link to Myrken-Land had been forged countless centuries ago by some nameless Elder Race, was the center of the maelstrom above; the clouds seethed in a reverse whirlpool, drinking a constant stream of black energy vomited up from the Gate.

The Spires had risen the day after the Horde had finally taken Gate Keep.

Running feet. Shouting, screaming. Altan pelted across the bridge, the horse's flanks heaving foamy sweat. Wheeling the frantic beast, he cried out to the tide of men following him -
"Destroy the bridge! Strand them!"
The mechanisms built into the Lake Bridge long ago were set in motion, sending the entire length of it - and the mass of ravenous, shrieking Horde barbarians pouring across it bent on tasting Temurian blood - into the glossy depths of the lake.
"That will slow them for a time, Altan, but not forever." He knew the voice. Vinter Danesti stood at his side, as always, heaving, sprayed with the blood of his foes and friends alike.
Altan drew his breath. A trickle of salty red passed down his face. "Back to the city. Barricade the main gate. Garrison all of our troops. Prepare for a siege."
Vinter closed his eyes.


For hours, he had stood on the walls of the city and watched the Horde seethe about the island, looking for a way across. It had almost amused him. There were no trees upon the island to built raft or boat; the Gate was too small to admit the Horde's fearsome Dragons.

But he knew what lay behind the Horde. He had seen the Winged Man on the battlefield. He knew what terrible mind lay behind their mindlessness. And he had seen still worse...

At first, the Horde had been men and beasts. Months upon months of hard fighting had waged in secret across the territories North of Myrken Wood. The wastelands. Altan Temur had heard rumours of black Spires rising around the southern land, and the fateful Tavern. He had given no thought to them at the time, too concerned with the movements of the enemy...

Never knowing that his true enemy was waiting.

Thessaline and New Dauntless had wedged the foe between them, the twin anvils to Altan's hammer. He had crushed the ten thousand wing, driven them into flight; but his allies, too, had gone, for word that Duke Burel was dead had reached the front lines, and unrest in New Dauntless had forced Taliaferro's forces to depart. The Prince had left behind, fortunately, a company of some hundreds. Without them, Altan knew he would not have made it back to his city.

The attack had come without warning. Ten thousand strong he had faced and defeated, but the Horde, and the mind of Zengh Vidyeh, was not finished. Their reinforcements had come, and then -

And then the Things. Altan knew them as if from a fevered dream half-forgotten. Things without name; grotesque fusions of beast and bird, fish, reptile, all diseased and cancerous and writhing, things of claw and tentacle and tusk, with boiling, bleeding eyes and forms that trembled with bloodlust. Things that swam beneath the shadows, gibbering out pulsing cries that sent the bravest man to his knees with fear. Things that ran faster than any steed, things that flew on blighted wings, things made of skinless flesh fused with barbed and twisted metal...

He knew now what the black Spires meant. Hell had come to Myrken Wood, and its eyes were on Temuria.

Why? What did we do to provoke this madness, this horror?

The Things came through the Gate the day after the Horde, and with their coming, the lake was no longer an obstacle. It boiled and seethed with foul shapes, now, literally alive with Them. He could see the glow beneath it burning, where their abominations were birthing themselves, preparing for the final assault.

It would not be long now, before Temuria fell. Altan wondered, with the kind of hysterical amusement left to the damned alone, if the Things knew how great the overkill would be - their countless masses against Altan's remaining, battered handful, all on the edge of madness and despair.

Why?

Staring out, at the Spires, at his ravaged and raped homeland, at the bloody emblem in the sky ...three triangles, within each other, and its black heart above Gate Keep, Altan Temur suddenly knew the answer.

"Arethusia...where are you?"

---

[Bishop]

Maxwell Bishop finally had decided he waited long enough speculating, guessing and simply wondering what was beneath these monolithic structures and went on his own to investigate. He knew full well that they were either being or had been used by the vile Maelhim.... And he was slowly beginning to understand where they originated, but unless he went underground, he would never know for sure.

He approached what was left of the largest Spire, cautious but brave, knowing what evils, what dangers existed in just coming this close. As the forest around him became more defiled, more derranged, he dismounted and sent his trusty horse back to camp. No need to endanger his old friend, no, he would be doing this alone. So, the rest of the way he proceeded on foot, katana at the read, the magic weapon's blade glowing a soft blue as he walked.

After some time when he finally reached the Spire, he found that entrance moving down into its interior and steeling himself for what was to come, he went down.

It took a while to climb down those twisted black stairs, his boots scuffing loudly against the stone-like surface and when he finally reached the bottom he found exactly what he didn't expect.....

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

For hours that night until the morning sun kissed the surface above Bishop searched the subterranian complex that was under those blasted Spires. And he found nothing! At first he was relieved, almost blissfully so... The Maelhim and their evil had gone, but wait... Since when did evil leave without a fight? That made no sense.

Then slowly, the horror dawned on him, yes, the Maelhim and their ilk had gone but to somewhere else. And that somewhere else had to be of great importance to abandon such an operation as vast and potentially powerful as this.

Yes, Bishop knew what this place was... It was a Spawning Pit, he's seen one like it before. This just wasn't something that was to abandoned off hand or without a fight....

Though, those questions would have to be asked later, right now Bishop knew he'd have to make sure that this place couldn't be used again for their former vile purposes. So, he went about small canvas bags at strategic points throughout the complex, which took him the great majority of the afternoon and he returned to the surface.

When he finally re-emerged from the darkness and stepped into the sunlight, he swiftly made his way back to his campsite... He wanted to detonate those bags right then and there, but no, he would hold himself in check. There might be a more opportune time for him to bring down that complex... For now he would wait, wonder and worry...

[White Queen]

Do you think you have so easily been forgotten...beloved Prince?

Her voice. It was as clear as a chime to his roiling mind.

Many pawns have fallen on your behalf...

A shadow passed over his form, in that moment...much too large to be a mere bird flying unknowingly into mass of evil. Were there even any birds left among the once lush land? They had likely abandoned the land, or been devoured by the dark shadow. Perhaps...it was doom finally settling on the halls of Temuria.

Our rook still stands, mighty Prince.

A heavy beat of wings fell to his ears, this time....along with a growling bugle. As his eyes rose to meet the sound...

You see them...? The Knights have stepped onto the board.

What he was seeing...was it truly tangible? Dragons. They dove from the thick clouds, dropping into an orbit around the castle, spiralling around it, not yet attacking the Horde just out of reach of the walls. Green, bronze, blue. A veritable small army of them, each calling to one another, their swirling eyes focusing on the enemy of Temuria.

The White Queen has made her advance.

A loud wailing roar peirced the air, heavy claws falling on the top battlements. They could be heard crumbling a bit of the rock as they dug for support. A white dragon kept her wings raised, the thick membrane quivering as she cried to her brothers who now circled her. She wasn't as large as the others, by far...almost like a child in comparison to a father... yet strength still rippled beneath her shimmering hide as she shifted, swinging her head down over the castle wall, tilting her wedge-shaped head.

...Did you miss me..?

A soft purr rumbled deep from the throat of the white beast as a gleaming lavender eye set its focus on the Prince.