Damn Cairell. Damn the false gods. Damn them all.

Arys paced before the altar, chewing at her thumbnail. It'd taken years to locate the supposed destroyer of Shroud, and when they found her in the middle of some podunk town on the furthest fringes of Everness of all places! The very kingdom created by the wretched Queen Everna herself! — months of meticulous planning went into ensuring she would not become a problem. It took a year to create the perfect circumstances for her removal and it failed. Cairell's plan went up in flames before their eyes. Godwin's attempt to rectify the situation went horribly awry.

The damned mayor survived. Shadowguard got involved. Everness's damned prince — the same one that had already once thwarted their attempted takeover of the kingdom — crawled out of his hole. The courts they spent years infiltrating failed them. A gods be damned tavern wench — named Everna, no less! — out maneuvered them at every turn.

This time, as she awaited the Attendant's arrival, she did not sit in purposeful meditation. She paced before the altar, her fists curling and uncurling as she battled the urge to fling the nearest statue into the marbled pillars. Damn them all to the furthest, darkest layers of Inanis! Curse them and their families for generations to come!

The headdress perched between her ram’s horns jangled as she spun sharply on her heels and stalked across the room once more. She reached up, touched the jagged edges protruding from the tip of the left one, and scowled. Though two hundred years old, the wound still ached. The shattered pieces, broken off during a tussle with the damned Queen of Shadows herself, sat in a locked box in her chambers — a staunch reminder of all she'd fought to achieve over the last three centuries.

Three centuries and all for nothing! They were on the verge of seeing their endeavors come to fruition, all of Trellan within their grasp and the Primordial One ready to ascend and pull the realm into his embrace — to retake what the false gods wrongly stole from him. Then that wretched queen reared her ugly head and Shadowguard resisted ever since.

Ayrs had half a mind to go to that piddly border town and wring the little whore's neck herself. Primordial One knew if she wanted anything done properly, she'd have to do it herself. Cairell's damned incompetence would see them all destroyed at this rate.

I should've gutted that half-blooded swine years ago, she thought.

Her hand flew to the dagger at her waist, black-bladed and the hilt dappled with rubies. Perhaps she should. Gut him, bleed him dry, and sacrifice his mangled corpse in the name of the Primordial One with a plea for a more competent leader. A descendant of the Thirteen could take his place, as they should've.

But that damned queen slaughtered them all, and she was all that remained, the last remnants of days long past. Her line ended when Queen Everna severed her great-grandson's head from his shoulders, leaving behind nothing but a slew of muddy-blooded bastard children who weren't fit to clean the scum from her boot. She would usurp Cairell herself if her duties as a seer allowed.

Alas, they did not. Her visions came too frequently and left her unapproachable for days at a time. It would do the order no good to have a leader, albeit competent, who spent most days with her eyes rolled in their sockets, dead to the mortal world for extended periods of time. She had neither the time nor the patience to deal with Cairell's murderous heretics.

With a burst of frigid air, the Attendant appeared above the altar, a thick cloud of smoke with two burning eyes set into its shapeless form. The seer spun to face it, her hands fisted and nails digging into her skin. With a deep, shuddering breath, she reined her temper. It would not do to lose her composure further before the Attendant of the Primordial One.

"Cairell seeks your guidance again," she said through gritted teeth.

"Cairell is as much a fool as you are," the Attendant admonished. It lashed out at the altar, the smoke coalescing into a long-fingered hand that swatted the candles from the altar. They clattered to the floor, hot wax spilling across the black marble. "I warned you, Ayrs, to proceed with caution. You paved the way to your own destruction and set in motion a series of events that will lead to your downfall if you are not wise.”

"Surely there must be something that can be done!"

There must be some way to recover from this setback. That's all it was — a minor setback. They endured worse at the hands of Queen Everna and did not fall.

Shroud reigned eternal. A minor, though frustrating, inconvenience would not bring them to their knees.

"It is now a matter of how much you will lose in your desperate scramble to right your wrongs." The Attendant laughed and her ears rang in protest. "It is of no fault but your own. You mortals say to let sleeping dragons lie, yet you threw down the gauntlet of challenge, and now you beg for aid in the wake of your blunder."

"And what exactly did we do wrong?" she demanded. "So that we may prevent it from happening again!"

The silence that followed her inquiry weighed heavily in the air, a stifling, smothering blanket thrown over the chamber. Arys scrambled to find a reason — anything that might justify how Godwin's failure pushed them beyond the point of no return. Had Shadowguard uncovered something vital to their demise? Perhaps they pushed Everness's prince into retaliation — the last reports she received from the dopey town hinted at some form of attachment to the little whore.

The Attendant's answer sent her stomach plummeting.

"You should not have moved against Everna."

Epilogue

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