It is known that the world is a war between darkness and light. That the Great Father, in the time before time, did raise this isle of light from the infinite darkness, and on it he did war with his sibling, mirrored in the void. From there war were born the race of men, and the great ring, the world of the material, which stands in the twilight between. Evil men breed darkness and bring our world closer to dissolution. Virtuous men bolster the work of our Father, and draw the Ring just a little further into the Light. King or farmer, a man’s goodness, his adherence to right action supports the Father’s eternal battle.

In those days millennia ago, many wondered if the vices of men had finally brought the Great One to his knees.

For when the sun turns black, and the wind howls with the grief of a million tormented souls, it is easy to imagine the void is coming. When the clans and tribes of the plains across the sea begin to stream across the great divide, on ships, on rafts, clinging to spars of driftwood, and all of them whisper of a terrible all consuming darkness in the west. A plague that devours men from the inside out and makes of them nightmare dolls of flesh and malice, who would not begin to believe the world was ending?

When they swarmed across the floor of the sea, and even the folk of the deep waters had to flee to our coasts, and beg the mercy of sacred fires, the god of the city rose from her idol to defend them, and was devoured in turn, made another puppet of malice. The people quailed in terror. When the king of kings arrived with the great black bladed, iron skinned legion and charged in his sky chariot of gold, there was hope. But although he laid about him with Severer, blade of kings, forged from star iron and the Great Ones blood in the earliest days, it was not enough. Though each blow slew a million of the un-men. It was not enough. The nightmare was held at bay, but not defeated.

But the end did come. It came first as a deadly silence, and then the air began to tear away toward the west, where a sun bloomed on the earth. The sacred fires roared and raged, devouring their braziers and scorching the shadows of malice from the sky. And then came the blast and ruin. The sky became fire, the sea drew back as if it were a pulled blanket. The winds scoured the towers and the walls, and the thundering return of the sea scoured the rest.

Only those who stood in the temple of the Great One lived, protected by its priest, who had given his flesh unto the Great One in order to project his light. All across the coast did this repeat, the priests of the temples protecting those who had fled to pray upon the temple steps, the resplendent light of the one driving back the earth shattering heat and force to keep the land unruined.

That was millennia ago, and the world had moved on. But wounds leave scars.

***

“Jahan, Jahan! I swear by the light if you let them take me you will be the first one I come for!” yelled a young man from his place atop the clay brick walls of the settlement. The spear in his hands bobbed and darted, its barbed iron tip punched through the fleshless jaws of a looming skull, and its haft spun, smashing boney, ash covered knuckles and sending more of the ashen demons crumbling into the swirling mass nightmare that swarmed against the brickwork, so many packed together that they seemed almost a liquid, the sea crashing against the shore. Here so many of the shadow men together made even the burning heat of the mid day cold.

The tiny fort he stood in was situated only a few kilometers from the shore. It’s only connection to the outside world a beaten dirt path to the military docks of Sari. The three meter high walls surrounded a single narrow three story tower.

The young man grimaced, cold sweat coursing down his brow from beneath his leather cap, a skeletal hand grasped his ankle and his spear swept it aside, he drew deep from the well of spirit, and wrought a dervish wind in the wake of his spear, kicking down the shadow men who had begun to mount it. “Jahan!-” he roared.

The wall shook, and a crescent bladed axe more akin to a plowblade than a man’s weapon swept the battlements, ripping through bone and ash a leathery flesh.

“Too loud Kir,” said the giant, shoulders rippling with muscle against the armor of quilted cloth stretched across his chest. He stood with a natural hunch, a wide fin of hardened gray flesh standing from his back. Solid black eyes squinted down from him past the moistened wrap of his headscarf, which concealed a mouth full of tearing triangular teeth.

Kir squinted back at his brother in arms scowling through his beard. “I am too loud! You are too slow! Does it take so long to alert the holy one?”

The axe head fell, and a lost soul wailed as its vessel was reduced to dust. “Some underneath.”

Kir grimaced, and he drew his spear up in a defensive stance as a shadow man, faster than the other leapt up on the backs of its kin and reached him,it’s own foreign blade a dazzling web of steel. He fought it back with a whirling wind and iron haft, at last striking with his boot under its sternum and launching a gust that saw the thing plowed back into the sand a hundred meters away.

The shadow men were getting smarter. If this continued…

He felt the clay under his boots rumble. In the already bright desert sun, light welled up, incandescent beneath the bricks. The tower shone from within, the great sun stone at its peak shining with the Great One’s light.

And the dead and the wicked did quail from His light, and fled into the sands.

Although, Kir thought, watching their backs with gimlet eye, his spear still at the ready. Perhaps retreat was the better word. It was not like the first waves, where many died still clawing at the glowing walls or fled in utter disorder like panicked cattle. He could see lines in their mass, and if what Jahan said was true, their chaotic clawing at the walls, had only been a distraction.

“The shadow men are different here,” Jahan said, crossing massive arms over his chest. If this was the beginning they would have pursued the fleeing remnants.

They had learned not to. Casualties meant nothing to the shadow men of the Burning Waste. Not here, not on their own shores.

“I do not like it, some who are turned, they retain cunning and skill, but their minds are still animal,” Kir said. “Sapping is not complex, but all the same…”

“This is a bad idea,” Jahan said, in his slow and patient way. “The Wastes are a land of devils. They belong to the Dark One.”

“Marching into the void itself to stake a claim,” Kir said quietly. They were all, each and every one of them soldiers of the One, the Great Father. But you could not fight the Dark with spears and arrows and armies. And this felt too much like that.

But the newly crowned King of King’s was ambitious. All the cities and lands had fallen under his banners, all lesser kings kneeled at his throne, and the lands of Sarasid teemed with wealth and men. Even the lands which had once been frontiers on the southern continent had been pushed to the very edge on which men could live, where earth turned to ice and the night seemed eternal. But now there was no more to give. In the north they traded with the Jeweled Court ships of the crab-men, who guarded the outer islands of their home jealously. The King did not wish to break that uneasy peace while his navy was so small.

The Burning Waste was the only land left unowned by the hands of men.

And so they came, to tame and cleanse and settle. To parcel lands of grand sizes as gifts for loyal kings.

But Kir and Jahan, they were beneath such games, beneath the eyes of kings. Mere soldiers ordered to take command of the first fortresses laid upon the steps of hell.

“If you came for me, I’d beat you,” Jahan said, idly, watching the dust vanish into the horizon.

“You’d not see me coming,” Kir scoffed. “You great oaf.”

“Your spear would bounce off, with those little chicken wings you call arms,” Jahan said wisely.

Kir simply rolled his eyes, and breathed out a gust of wind, causing a damp part of his friends scarf up to slap against his eyes. “The tunnel is dealt with?”

The large man sputtered and grumbled, swiping his eyes clear. “What took so long. Had to close the earth slow, to not break the fort.”

Kir gave an acknowledging grunt. “Did you see the one in the back? The one with the crimson plumes on its helm?”

“Just watching,” his friend agreed.

“I don’t like it,” Kir said softly. “I wish his lordship would listen.”

“Even with his holiness we are too few here, too thin. We grasp too quickly,” Jahan agreed.

And the two stood in silence, watching the shifting of the wastes. Beneath the eyes of gods and kings, there were only soldiers and few enough cared for their tales.