“Blessed Mother, you’re okay,” Endaha said as the barricades were finally removed. San and the soldiers stumbled into the warehouse. Endaha, Pavano, Azios, Herokov, and Bostarion were all armed and ready for a fight.

“You bring the Baron’s men here?’ Herokov demanded, his craggy face etched with anger.

“Peace, brother,” Pavano said. “San can explain.”

San had to admit, a blossom of gratitude bloomed within him at Pavano’s words. “The Baron is dead, the new Baron, Esomir, has sided with the Hesna cult.”

A deep silence filled the warehouse. Havatair let out a soft curse. “Fucking fool,” was all San heard.

“He’s dead?” Herokov asked.

“Yeah.”

“The Hesna cult?” Bostarion muttered. He spat on the warehouse floor. San watched the man, he hadn’t been around for the last few days, off on his own doing whatever it was he did. He had his sars and had left to try and sway Havatair to do something about Ilagio. That seemed like such a long time ago, now that San thought on it.

“Bostarion,” Havatair said.

“Fuck you,” the ranger spat back.

The soldiers behind Havatair set their hands on their swords, eyeing the old ranger with anger.

“Ease up, boys,” the massive soldier said. “He’s just ornery because Ilagio left the city and went home. We can’t do anything until the Baron decrees it.”

“Utter woolyshit,” the ranger said.

“Who’s your guests?” Pavano asked. He looked the bookseller up and down, and the two tussled up women.

“Hello,” Vicca Desaros said, bowing at the waist. “I’m Vicca Desaros, scribe, bookseller, and historian.”

“That’s a Hesna priestess and the other is someone who’s afflicted by their spell,” San said, gesturing to the others.

“Where is that Purification?” Havatair demanded.

“Over here, lad,” Pavano said, grabbing the stainless steel water bottle and the glass whiskey bottle. There was a smaller pot filled with the remainder of the Purification. The two gallons San had taken to the Baron had been only two thirds of what had been distilled.

The battered woman was moaning in pain, her eyes snapped open, revealing dark black voids. She struggled against her bindings and snarled like an animal.

“What is wrong with her?” Herokov asked. Endaha pulled Azios back as the young man wanted to see what was going on.

“She’s afflicted,” San said. “The Hesna cult has been burning a black flame in the Market Square. I think that it does this to them.”

“Aye,” Havatair said. “They’ve been burning it for the last few days, thousands have seen it by now.”

“A spell,” Vicca said, she looked at the woman with interest. “What does it do?”

“This,” San gestured to the snarling woman. Vicca looked annoyed at his answer. “They’ve been burning a black flame that makes you feel grief and misery.”

“Flame magic is rare,” Vicca said. “It is spiritual magic, those who control it can alter the soul.”

“You know about magic?” San asked.

“Only what I’ve read,” the woman replied. “Some say that flame magic is the oldest magic, the first gods protected mankind through the flames, it provided warmth, comfort, and cooked their foods. It was the magic they relied on the most.”

San took in the information, wondering if the Mage Chief knew that too.

“How does a black flame turn people into zombies?” San asked.

“Zombie? I don’t know that word,” Vicca replied. “Like I said, flame magic is spiritual magic, it effects the soul of a person. It could be that those who looked at the flame and were afflicted by the grief it caused, they would find that the fire of their souls were snuffed out.”

“Then they’re soulless?” Havatair asked.

“Possibly.”

“We’ll see what Purification does,” San said. “If it doesn’t work, then we’re fucked.”

“Purification?” the bookseller looked to San and the bottles. “What is that?”

San didn’t explain. Instead he walked to the snarling woman, grabbed her head and pulled the cork from the bottle. He poured a good measure of Purification down her throat, he had a steady pouring hand and got what he believed to be two ounces into her. She tried snarling, but he clamped her mouth shut.

She wasn’t Leveled, therefore she couldn’t struggle against his grip. Eventually nature took over and she swallowed the liquid.

Convulsions rocked the woman’s body and the soldiers quickly stepped away as a dark fog began forming above her.

“What the hell?” San muttered.

A figure formed, hazy and black. It screeched and then dissipated.

“What the hell was that?” Pavano asked.

Endaha was shock white, gripping onto Azios. The bookseller stood there with her mouth gaping and even the soldiers were horrified by what they say.

The woman who had been snarling moments before began weeping, a deep and sorrowful cry. She cradled her arms and curled into a ball, wailing like a child.

“She’s back to normal,” San said. He pulled back an eye lids, tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks and the eye that stared back at him was human.

“Sweet Senta,” the woman cried. “Oh, sweet Senta, my baby.” She rocked back and forth sobbing.

“Well, that works,” Havatair said, looking down at the woman.

“What magic is that?” Vicca asked, her eyes wide.

“Can you make more?” Havatair asked.

San looked down at the bottle in his hands and the small pot left over. “No,” he said. “I’ve used up all my mana.”

“Well, shit,” the soldier muttered. He looked to the bound up priestess. She was staring at them in shock and horror. “Well, time to see what this bitch knows.”

***

“The problem with torture,” San said, “is that it gives unreliable information. Hurt someone long enough and hard enough and they’ll say anything you want them to say.”

“Aye,” Pavano said. “Plus she’s a fucking Hesna priestess. She’ll probably thank you and ask for more.” The old man cracked his knuckles as Havatair and the soldiers sat the priestess up on a stump of wood.

All eyes were on her, Endaha managed to coax the sobbing woman to her feet and took her to the second floor. She knew what was about to happen and didn’t want her to be witnessed to it. There was also Cassa and Kovass to look after, having been hidden in case there was an attack upon the warehouse.

“I can’t in good conscience allow this to happen,” San said as the soldiers stepped away from the woman.

“Too damn bad,” Havatair said. “These fucks are using evil magic and they’ve done something to Esomir. I’m gonna find out what and we’re gonna cleanse him of it. She’ll tell me what they’re doing even if I have to break every bone in her body. The Baron was good at taking his time killing people, and Senta forgive me, I learned how to do the same.”

The woman chuckled behind her gag. Her eyes were opened wide and they showed insanity. The eyes reminded San of the madman he had seen in the Tribal village of Forest River. The crazed man who had been tied up to a pole to die of exposure.

The cult was turning people into monsters and they were using them to attack those they viewed as threats. The bookseller was knowledgeable, she was smart and knew far more than the average person. Therefore she had to die. It reminded San of the revolutions he had read about in history. Political dissidents and intellectuals were always the first to go.

Whatever the cults plans were, it involved securing White Tower and using it as a base for their operations. The city was important, but why?

“Why were they trying to kill you?” San asked Vicca. The bookseller looked up at him in surprise. She had been given some spare clothing by Endaha and San, so she was bundled up in bulky woolen coats and seemed like a child playing dress up.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was sleeping, I heard a pounding at my door, and then they dragged me out. I managed to get loose and then ran. Then I came across the Guards.”

“What do you know of White Tower?” San asked.

The woman looked surprised again. “A lot actually. I’m a historian,” she said, standing up straighter. “Not a teller of tales about gods blessing mankind, but of actual factual history. The tales told to children and Imperial citizens is just that, tales. I and my fellow colleagues around the Empire have been trying to find the real history of the world. What truly happened and not some epic poem written by some lousy writer a thousand years later.”

“What is important about White Tower?” San asked.

The woman shrugged. “The land is fertile, there’s easy access to the Red River, and the northern mountains are filled with iron and tin and copper. There is a bounty of good lumber and the river is filled with fish.”

“What’s important about this place, magically?”

Vicca frowned and her brow furrowed. “There are some texts from the Old Kingdom, the ones that aren’t just mad ramblings about void horrors and the Celestial Cycle, that say White Tower was the heart of magic and power. That here is where it was easiest to speak to the gods and bring about change to the world.”

San thought back on his encounter with the Stoneman. He had shown him what White Tower had looked like seven hundred years prior. A great forest with the towering White Tower covered in the unreadable arcane symbols. The tower still existed, but the symbols weren’t there anymore, either removed or covered up.

“The White Tower was here long before the city itself,” San said. “Why did the Old Kingdom build the obelisks. I’ve seen one in a komai near Midway. What are the obelisks for?”

“How do you know that?” Vicca asked surprised. “The obelisks were all destroyed when the Empire conquered this place. It was said that they were what the Old Kingdom used to condense their powers, they were what made them powerful beyond anything we know nowadays.”

“And the White Tower is an obelisk?” San asked.

Vicca looked at him with fear in her eyes, casting a glance toward Havatair who was arguing with Pavano on how to deal with the priestess. “Who told you that?”

“I saw it in a vision of the past,” San said truthfully. “I met the Stoneman and although he didn’t point it out, I saw the White Tower as it was seven hundred years ago.”

Vicca looked at him with disbelieving eyes. She shook her head and wrung her hands. “The Tribals have a story about the Stoneman, an obsidian knapper who kills demons and gods. The day he died at the hands of a great dragon, the Blessed Mother gave him life again to keep fighting the horrors that plague their people.”

“So he’s also a Hero for a god?” San asked.

“Also?” Vicca gave him another frown.

“Like Lakovi Sorvania or Giamoor Delsanva?”

“Gia…” Vicca stared at him with wide eyes. “Do not say that name, fool,” she hissed.

“Why?”

Vicca looked scared. “Hetvanna’s Butcher, the Skinwalker, the Hearteater, the Crimson Hand,” she whispered. “To speak his name is to summon him.”

San decided not to push the local norms. “Okay,” he said. “So for the Old Kingdom and Tribals, White Tower was a magical place?”

“Of sorts. Many rituals were performed here in Old Kingdom times, but no city was ever built. It became a fortress when the Empire destroyed the Old Kingdom, but was abandoned when they left. The Tribals took it over and expanded upon it, turning the city into one of their holy sites.”

“So White Tower is a magical place,” San thought on the magic system he had heard about in books and movies. “It’s like an intersection of leylines or something. Where people can have visions of gods and Heroes?”

“So some say,” Vicca said.

That would somewhat explain his own experiences within the city. The only other supernatural, powerful entity that wasn’t a void horror had been Winter’s Lament. She had come to him several times, but not since he had arrived to the city. The last time she had spoken to him had been when they were a day’s journey from the city.

“Have you ever heard of someone called Winter’s Lament?” San asked. The bookseller shook her head. “She might be a Tribal diety or something. The Pale Woman, White Woman?”

Vicca shook her head again.

San racked his brain. What were the Hesna cult doing here? The only thing he knew about them was that they were trying to free their goddess from the void where she battled against the horrors there. That and they were considered insane and castrated themselves.

There were a lot of things that probably could be done in a place of magic. San had been using mana lately and he didn’t feel any difference while he had made Purification. It still drained him of mana and left him sick. Shouldn’t a place of magic be a place where mana was easy to replenish and use?

Perhaps it wasn’t the infusion of mana that was the reason this place had been considered sacred. The Stoneman had claimed that the veil between worlds was growing thin. He had experienced these visions with the Heroes of gods in the days since he had arrived and not before.

Then there was the black figure that had been removed from the woman. What was that? Was it a creature or as Vicca had said, did the black flame do something to her soul? San mulled on the thought and Vicca looked about nervously.

“I was told the veil between worlds is thinning,” San said, mostly speaking to himself, but also to Vicca. “The black flame effects the soul, as all soul magic. That black creature was removed from the woman when she drank Purification, so… was it her soul being warped or was it something that was placed within her?”

Vicca pondered his question. “Soul Magic is rare, as I said, and not many practice it anymore. It is one of those things that cannot be taught like all the Powers a Mage have, instead it is said that a person must be touched by a god to command it.” She paused for a moment, her brow furrowed again as she tried to remember some bit of information. “Many say that when the fire of the soul is weakened, then the void horrors are able to take it over. It is perhaps how the void horrors enter our world, by taking over the bodies of the weak souled, be it man or animal.”

“Then, those people we fought on the streets. They’re being controlled by void horrors?” San asked.

The bookseller paled as San spoke the words. She shuddered and looked away as if the words sickened her. “They can’t be so stupid as to do that,” she whispered.

“What do you know?” San asked.

“It is said, the Old Kingdom’s greatest power was bringing forth void horrors to fight for them. It is what led the Empire to destroy them utterly. They had managed to uncover some ancient power that allowed them to turn regular people into void horrors that they then unleashed upon their enemies.” Vicca was shaking as she spoke, mopping at her brow with the sleeve of her coat as nervous sweat rolled down her face. “I said the land upon which White Tower is built was a place of ritual, it was also a place of sacrifice. A place where thousands were murdered to give form to the void horrors that still plague this land to this day.”

“A place of sacrifice,” San said. He remembered Winter’s Lament’s words. The Old Kingdom fortress had been a place of sacrifice for the white furred creatures. A place where they were bringing something into this world. “Why would they bring void horrors into this world?”

“Because they are insane,” Havatair said. San and Vicca looked up, realizing that their conversation had been eavesdropped on. Havatair’s face was a boiled red, his eyes narrowing with anger, as he turned to look at the tied up woman. “Is this true?”

The priestess looked shocked at what San had said. She glanced to him, then the bookseller, and finally to Havatair. Her gag had been removed and her thin lips twisted back.

“You cannot stop us,” she said. “We shall bring back our goddess even if we must open the gates to the Void itself.”

“Not in my land and not with my people,” Havatair snarled.

“You think this is only happening in this place?” the woman sneered. “We are legion and the world is filled with places where the void and our world meet. My brethren have all marched out across the world and on the longest night of the year, we shall release our goddess from her exile.”

“How many will that kill?” San asked. “What kind of devastation will that cause?” His mind skipped back to his conversation with Hetvanna’s Hero. The burning city, the screams and dying people. He had claimed it was a vision of the future, a glimpse of what was to come.

If the Hesna cultists were doing this same thing in other places, other cities, other countries… then how many void horrors would they unleash upon the world?

The longest night of the year. San looked up and noticed a lightening of the world outside. The deep black was turning into morning blue, the sun was rising upon the last day before the longest night of the year.