Yukiko, the Yamato Shrine Priestess, sat on a perilous cliff in the dark and considered her life choices.

In the Shrines, there wasn’t supposed to be any sense of discrimination or privilege. One Shrine Maiden was equal to any Shrine Maiden. It didn’t matter if you came from humble or rich backgrounds, from noble or meager bloodlines, even differences in race were set aside. A Shrine Maiden, an Acolyte, a Priestess, they were all of them considered equal.

In theory, anyway.

There was a rumor that there was a trace of beastman’s blood in Yukiko’s bloodline. It wasn’t enough to manifest any beast traits, but for the Yamato, who valued blood ties above all things, it was enough to kick off a rumor.

Her family had visited the Guild of Blood, the organization that tracked marriages and family traces all the way back to Glory the Morningtide, the Yamato’s founding Empress. Nobility was determined by how many bloodline connections you held with the Dragon Empress, and so the Guild kept careful track of who married who, and the children that were born to them.

Yukiko herself didn’t have any such blood ties. Her family was a family of fishermen and women, vassals to a local lord. No authority to speak of, except perhaps to the nets they cast in search of fish and crustaceans. Her family had visited the guild, and there was no such stain on their bloodline- besides, she was Yamato! There were no beastfolk in their lands!

...but the rumor persisted obnoxiously. And, while there was technically no discrimination or bias or preferential treatment, Yukiko found herself picked last for important tasks, or shipped to inconvenient lands when necessary. She always found herself weighed, judged, and passed over in the cool assessing gazes of her sisters.

As for preferential treatment, one merely needed to look north to the Shrine of the Ancient Pine and their girl, or to the Shrine of the Stony Pool and their monopoly of the Kushinada-hime. Inequity was everywhere and the Shrines were thick with it.

And so she had been packed up and sent to Rothgar with a handful of sisters to find a suitable spot to erect a Shrine. What a farce. The Yamato would never expand into Rothgar. The Anglish would never permit it. They would be slaughtered by whatever monsters infested these lands, be they mutant, beast, or man, and that would be the ignoble end of a nuisance of a Shrine Priestess. A meaningless, empty death.

She let out a long breath. She knew she was doomed, but she still had her pride. She would do her best. She would try as hard as was possible to accomplish her mission, may the other Yamato Shrine Priestesses choke for it.

The Seventh Seal were savages, of course. The fallen noble Aldric filled his ranks with the dregs of society, pickpockets, street toughs, Anglish deserters, hedge mages infested with the stink of magical corruption, poorly-bred leavings of elf and man, beastmen and that terrifying monster that walked like a man, Daveth.

Still, her sisters had asked the captain of the Seal to escort Yukiko and her Shrine Maidens to Rothgar, smugly and cryptically talking about omens and portents.

The moment they set foot on this land, Yukiko winced as a sliver of pain seemed to flicker behind her eyes. She hadn’t made the connection until later; the more the Maidens moved through the land, the more that pain seemed to return, making her irritable and short tempered.

She had cast her own auguries and to her surprise, power draped over the land in a thin fog, lanced through with threads of pain like wires. Each time you crossed one of the lines, that pain, dimly felt, would echo within you, leaving you unable to sleep properly, feel satisfied with the food you ate, comfortable in the clothes you wore, or the company you kept.

Maybe the other Priestesses had scryed it, and she was mistaken. The problem was that once you tripped the trap, you were unable to ward yourself against it. The secret to Philippa’s restlessness was some massive spell that blanketed the whole land.

Who could cast such a spell? And to what end?

They’d needed a map for a more comprehensive augury. Aldric had provided one, grinning and smirking and tugging on his beard, probably wondering what she looked like naked.

“Well, here we are.” She muttered in the black.

It was impossible to go more than a few inches in any direction here without setting off one of those strange magical threads, so she sat in one place and hated everything, indiscriminately.

She and the other Shrine Maidens had descended into this cavern by looping around and approaching it from the south, rappelling down through a hole in the rubble-strewn ground into the cavern beneath.

Annoyingly, obnoxiously, the rope had decided to give way, plunging them into this gaping rent that tore into the earth, shattering the complex interconnected network of sewer drainages and basements and passages beneath the earth.

The whole place was shrouded in darkness. Her light spells flickered dimly in this uncertain space. Normal spells didn’t want to work in this area, despite being magically rich. It was a contradiction that stabbed into the festering irritability that boiled in her.

Irritated, she picked up a small piece of rubble and chucked it into the gaping abyss she could barely see. The rock sailed out into the void and fell without even a click or a clatter on the way down. There was no way to tell how far down the tear in the ground went, or what lay at the bottom.

The Shrine Maidens sat in small groups nearby, waiting for their next orders. Yukiko herself was waiting on the giant of a man to beat down the stone walls with his stupid brutish strength.

Her mood fluctuated between calm and irritability. The longer she was here, the more it ate into her, poisoning her thoughts. The malice she felt towards her sisters, towards the Seventh Seal, towards the Shrine Maidens under her didn’t belong to her fully, it was something that had grown in her mind like a canker ever since she’d set foot in this land.

She had no doubts it was affecting everyone else, too. She practiced her meditation exercises and struggled to keep her sanity.

*****

“If what you’ve claimed is true, Captain Aldric, it would not be impossible to serve under you.” Malacath decided. “We would first need to see proof of your ability to command. My men will follow me of course, but it will remain to be seen whether or not you are worth swearing allegiance to.” He offered an apologetic look.

Aldric nodded. “Reasonable.” He replied, and offered his hand. Malacath gripped Aldric’s wrist in the manner of fellow warriors and nodded.

Aldric strode across the room and peered up into the gloom.

“You ready?” He called, and Daveth grunted.

“Waiting on you.” the giant replied back.

Malacath invoked his light spell, and directed it towards the giant.

“Useful.” Daveth praised, and grappled with a massive chunk of stone.

“Truly, commander, there’s no need for this. Let me summon my men. It will be safer if we-” Malacath began, but Daveth released the chunk of stone, which immediately slid between the two slabs of stone that blocked access to the first floor of the sunken building.

There was a hollow crack of rock slamming against rock that echoed atonally, and everyone winced at the impact.

“Well, shit.” Daveth muttered, and then the slab of stone he was standing on split across the middle and accordioned as it folded in upon itself. Daveth let out a shout and disappeared in the dust cloud with a sharp yelp and a groan of pain.

“Son of a bitch, you asshole!” Aldric shouted somewhat nonsensically as he tripped over the rubble in his hasty search for the fallen giant.

“Fuck.” Daveth muttered and then coughed and groaned.

“You all right?” Aldric asked, and Daveth frowned bitterly.

“I’m not dead.”

Aldric snorted, and then sneezed. “The fuck were you thinking?” He accused as Daveth struggled to lift himself out of the collapsed stone.

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” He complained. “More importantly, though; the priestess and her friends should be able to get through the hole.”

“Malacath, help me with him, would you?”

The elf barked a laugh. “I shall try.”

Aldric poked his head through the hole, and then, seeing nothing dangerous, crawled through, followed by Malacath, and lastly Daveth, who had to wedge himself into the gap and pull himself through.

Aldric eyed Yukiko, who sat on the edge of a massive rip in the ground, and then he glanced up. There was a ceiling or roof of sorts, piled rubble, slabs of stone that looked to be foundations and walls of buildings haphazardly and precariously perched atop each other.

“Don’t like the look of that.” Aldric muttered. “You could have brought everything down on top of us, Daveth.”

Daveth nodded warily.

Aldric looked to the Priestess. “We’ve got a path cleared for you and your Maidens.” He gestured back to the hole, where some light illuminated the gap barely.

She shook her head. “Not yet. I appreciate it, but not yet.” She acknowledged, and then pointed down, indicating the chasm. “I and my sisters need to go down, Captain Aldric. If you could provide us with some rope, I’d be grateful.”

Daveth edged closer to the edge of the ravine and peered into the dark.

“Down there? You must be joking.” He toed a small chunk of stone off the edge of the breach and listened to hear it fall. When he didn’t hear anything, he frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She shook her head. “It’s my responsibility to go down there. It’s not necessary for you to accompany me...” She began, but shook her head as if to clear it. “But it would be appreciated.”

Malacath created a globe of light, illuminating the area. He edged out to the lip of the chasm and dropped the globe, and watched as it drifted down.

“That’s quite a drop.” He observed, and grimaced. “Not something to be undertaken lightly.”

Daveth eyed the Priestess. “I thought it was your responsibility to set up a shrine?” He asked, and looked over the edge again, and shook his head in negation.

“We will not be able to set up a Shrine on this land until we take care of what’s down there.” Yukiko replied, rising to her feet. She rubbed her temples and sighed. “This comes first, for us.” She turned to Aldric and the two commanders.

“You and your men don’t have to come along.” She assured them.

“So what’s down there?” Aldric asked. “A monster? A dragon? A demonhost? The Void of Oblivion itself?”

Yukiko shrugged. “I have no idea.” She stated flatly, and then pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment.

“You recall our earlier conversation back at the Barony when i mentioned something peculiar was here?” Yukiko asked, and then gestured to the crevice. “Whatever it is, it’s down there.”

Daveth and Aldric eyed each other, and then turned to Malacath.

“What do you think?” Aldric asked.

“What do I think?” The elf repeated curiously. “I think I’d be a lot more comfortable riding away from whatever’s down there than anything else.”

“Man’s got himself a point.” Daveth agreed.

Aldric nodded. “We’ve been further underground than this.” he countered. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.” He snorted laughter. “At least it’s not inside a volcano, unlike last time.”

Malacath blinked and smiled uncertainly. “You were inside a volcano?”

Aldric shrugged, and Daveth scratched his beard.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” Aldric finally admitted, but Daveth shook his head, and tapped Malacath on the shoulder.

“Don’t listen to him. It was as bad as it sounds...” He paused, and then added, “Worse, even.”

Aldric shot Daveth a glare. “Point is, we survived that. Comparatively speaking, this’ll be a cakewalk.”

Malacath eyed the two veterans, and then folded his arms across his breastplate in thought.

“Do you have the supplies to finance a trip down there? Ropes, food, water, climbing gear, weapons, and the like?” Malacath asked curiously, eyeing Aldric and Daveth.

“Man’s got himself a point.” Daveth repeated.

Malacath shrugged. “My men and women don’t have the necessary gear, and we’re low on supplies. If this is something that you’ve decided must be done...” he essayed uncertainly, “Then I will do my best to support you, but my contribution will be small.” he advised.

*****

The Seventh Seal and the Shrine Maidens fell back to camp to take stock of their resources. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any rope of significant length, nothing they could use to rappel down the side of the cliff.

“Options?” Aldric asked his men as they ate their meals.

“Oh wow, I sure wish we had an engineering corps. I’m sure they would have come up with something.” Daveth replied, and got a glare from Aldric for his trouble.

Daveth glanced at Malacath. “What about magic? Could you do something to get us down there?”

Malacath blinked a few times at the question. “Unfortunately, our skills don’t work that way.” He offered with a shrug, holding his hands up in polite surrender.

“So we can’t get down there.” Daveth mused thoughtfully. “What about bringing whatever’s down there up here?”

Malacath shook his head again. “Aside from our healers, our magics tend towards the offensive, rather than the logistical.” He explained.

Daveth blew out a breath. “Well, there goes that idea.”

“We could get some rope from the kingdom.” Morden offered.

Aldric blinked at the suggestion. “You think that’d work?”

Morden shrugged. “Send me and the quartermaster with a cart and some coin, we’ll show up and see if there’s some place in the kingdom that offers some rope. I think it’s likely we’ll come across some. And with just the two of us, we won’t stand out like we would if we brought the whole army.” he offered.

Aldric nodded. “Risky... but I’m willing to make the attempt. We’ll do it. Prepare to set out at first light.”

Morden nodded and saluted with a fist to heart.

“Why does the Yamato woman need our help?” Alysia asked Daveth as he was heading to his tent.

“Dunno, wouldn’t say.” Daveth replied. “She mentioned something off about this land, how it ... makes you irritable. Something like that.” Alysia glanced up at Daveth’s face at this.

“And what was your reaction?” She asked curiously.

“She’s probably right. There’s something here that’s like rubbing your hands in powdered glass.” He muttered.

“Hmm.” She mused. “I shall have to keep an eye on her.” Alysia decided.

“Why?” Daveth asked as he reached his tent.

“I told you before, remember? The Yamato keep secrets. I can’t help but wonder if this is but one of them.” Alysia replied simply.

“...whatever.” Daveth offered, rubbing his face with his hand. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow morning, when I'm awake.”

He ducked inside his tent.

As Alysia turned to leave, she very nearly collided with Lynnabel.

“You heard?” Alysia asked without any preamble, already knowing that her sister had heard every word.

“Of course.” Lynnabel replied. “It seems like the Yamato might be a threat to us,” she paused, and held up a finger, “but we need to make sure before we do anything. I’ve discovered that I quite like my head where it is, and I’d rather not be parted with it anytime soon.”

Alysia snorted. “Come, let’s sleep.”

The sky glowed with the colors of embers and coals, and sparks trailed down from the clouds, glowing and winking out.

On a forgotten beach, abandoned by time, a girl with hair that looked to be carved from fire danced and played as her whims directed.

He lay near a low stone wall, face pressed against the nutrient-rich soil, fast asleep. It amused her to see him like this, somehow sleeping in his own dream.

She eyed him from time to time as she did what she pleased. There were endless delights to keep her busy, but she always managed to circle around back to him, to watch over him as he slept. She’d promised him, and she always kept her promises.

“Sleep well, Daveth.” She murmured down at him. “The phoenix protects.”