Myth: The Beginning

[Moreth]

The frost crystallized around Moreth with a cracking noise, forcing him to a halt and freezing him in mid-stride.

The crackling continued as he strained against the ice. First his hand freed itself. And then his arm. Shards of ice fell away, taking blackened chunks of ash with them.

[Parsideon Denix]

Denix recovered, bringing his sword up as he paced around the semi-frozen fiend.

"What manner of creature is this that the combined elements cannot destroy?"

He swung downwards, lopping off the free arm that held the root dagger at the elbow, and kicked it away from Moreth, setting the evil seed itself alight in a searing cone of fire as it rolled away. He steadied his shield and stood back, completely doubtful that even this would stop the threat.

[Moreth]

The root burned readily, but no sooner had the flames touched it than it released a ear-splitting, mind-piercing scream that drowned out everything else. Just beyond the Circle, the horses bolted, while those inside the Circle were nearly overcome.

Moreth roared in rage and twisted with such force that one of his legs, still encased in ice, snapped off, and his maimed form fell to the ground on the stump of an arm and one leg.

At last the root had burned up, and the last echoes of its scream dissipated over the breadth of the Steelwood. Moreth looked up at Denix with a venomous gaze.

"You may have stopped me from tapping this Circle's magic," he said, with a rattle that suggested his lungs were crumbling from the inside, "but you've just made enough noise to raise the dead."

From all around them, there was a sound of something stirring in the woods.

[Calleh]

Calleh lifted himself to his feet, then found he had dragged his hand through Moreth's ashes. Repulsed, he shook them off and then replaced his swords in their sheaths.

His ears still rang from the mandrake scream, and his own footsteps sounded to him like they were coming from the bottom of a deep well. He crossed the circle unsteadily to stand next to Denix, towering over their stricken foe. With eyes full of righteous contempt, he conjured a tongue of flame in his right hand and held it menacingly over the monster.

"Tell us your business, demon," he demanded.

[Moreth]

"You are in no position to make demands, son of the Eridan," Moreth gloated, as if he were the one standing over a fallen enemy. "Do you think you threaten me with your little burning light? Hah!

"All the elements are passing. Your affinities will come to ruin. Fire burns out. Wood decays. Earth crumbles and metal tarnishes. Even water and air will become poison to living things before the end. Only the Seventh Affinity will remain."

Around them there was the noise of earth being displaced, ancient metal clattering, and bone turning on bone.

"And no matter what side you start on," Moreth said, "eventually, inevitably, you will all join ours."

And with that, he crumbled entirely, every piece of him left on the Circle, and flew away on the wind.

[Blind Molly]

Molly shuddered, her ears still ringing from the awful sound the unnatural weapon had made while it was being burnt. Cailean got to his feet, and if she had not been concentrating on Calleh and the demon creature he was addressing, she would have liked to have spent more time seeing what her young companion looked like before the water that touched his skin evaporated. The Seer coughed as ash tickled her nose, and she shivered a bit in the wind that blew through the Circle.

Her clothes dripping with water, she cocked her head to the side. "Our horses have fled, and with them our supplies. And..." In the sudden absence of an enemy, the company within the Circle was mostly silent. A clank of armor was heard in the woods, and Cailean bristled uncomfortably as the trees moved around them, waving their branches as the dead beneath their roots clawed out of the soil.

The seer did not need to use her powers to see the immediate future. There was only one thing in the Steelwood that would make that noise, and she turned to face the forest, still soaking wet. "The dead rise..."

The travelers turned from the ashen spot where Moreth had lain, and looked around to the edges of the Circle. The slave boy, crouching at the far edge of the Sacred Circle, having been unable to hold onto the reins of the Necian's gorrath, screamed in terror and ran towards the center of the Circle as an armor clad skeleton clanked towards him.

The party backed up, and it was soon apparent that the former denizens of the underworld could not cross the border into the Sacred Circle. Molly turned her head towards Calleh. "Should I be glad I cannot see them?"

The scholar did not answer, and she swallowed hard, the Steelwood full of the moans of the reanimated warriors.

TO BE CONTINUED....

[The Scribe of Ages]

Come. Let us read on, to Chapter Two...