Retribution of the Unbroken
“There lie in Time faults of my own making.”
-Rashenar Eknolen, the Ripper
Shadowbinder Ylkran Drosvek sat unmoving. He had realized his mistake too late, and it had cost him everything. Nearby, Rashenar turned to leave, a rift tearing itself open in the air above the Shadowbinder. Before stepping into the rift, Rashenar turned back to the comatose man, realizing the potential that still remained within him.
He was powerful, that shadowbinder, no matter how arrogant he may have been. Possibly powerful enough to become Rashenar’s greatest asset. As a Fracture with access to the sands of Time, Ylkran would be formidable. Reaching out a skeletal hand, Rashenar manifested a glowing orb which hovered a few inches before the Shadowbinder. Slowly, tendrils of dark energy began leaking from Ylkran’s body into the orb. His eyes blackened as his consciousness was interred within the matrix of time.
When he was finished, Rashenar’s mind replayed the future he had seen so many times before. Soon, he knew, the desperate followers of Syvren would arrive and, as he always did, Rashenar would watch, amused, while they were drawn, one-by-one, into his rift. With a single sideways step, he passed outside the stream of time, leaving the rift shimmering above the fractured form of Ylkran, and took up his place to wait.
It did not take long. One by one the group was drawn into the rift, and when only the luminar remained, Rashenar let it close. He stepped back into real time and smiled at the luminar who remained, the Divine Seed cradled in their hand.
“You’re not one of us,” the luminar called Sōn remarked.
Rashenar smiled and reached out, this time with his flesh-covered hand, to pluck the Divine Seed from them. “Is that… not obvious?” the voidreaver said, and then he was gone, untethered from this part of time.
Elsewhere, from his place just out of phase with real time, Rashenar looked at the still form of the would-be god Donnil. He thought it fitting that Ylkran had put Donnil in this state, and that Rashenar himself would end it.
The voidreaver’s eyes could see the patterns of energy swirling about Donnil, shaping the comatose form into a fledgling deity even as those patterns were, in turn, shaped by him. A smile crept across Rashenar’s face. He could not lose. On the one hand, he wanted—needed—just a portion of Donnil’s power. With it, added to his own, Rashenar would ascend, his might surpassing even that of his dread lord Morithal. And on the other… he let the thought pass. Some things were best unspoken even in the mind.
Rashenar knew this could not be a simple Fracturing. The power of this neophyte-deity precluded that. No, Donnil would be Untethered. He would become a bound apprentice to the voidreaver, and one day, far from now, even Rashenar’s heir; not even a voidreaver could live forever.
Rashenar began the Untethering, raising his hands before himself, the Divine Seed hovering between them. His six orbs of time, past, present, and future, surrounded the seed and began to resonate with it.
As he concentrated, a luminous orb, not unlike that which Rashenar had used to fracture Ylkran, materialized above Donnil. This orb first aligned to the resonance patterns that already surrounded Donnil then shifted subtly until it brought those patterns into alignment with his pulsing orbs. As this happened, Rashenar felt the power of his orbs of time grow. He laughed, giddy as the magic filled him.
“Abomination!” a voice called out, and before he could even turn, a column of light flared brightly from above, slicing through his spell and driving the voidreaver to his knees. The divine seed clattered to the ground as the orbs of time sprang back to Rashenar.
“You are a time abomination, Ripper,” a woman’s voice said, “and I will see you ended this day!”
Rashenar looked up, smoke rising from his robes, the ground around him seared in a perfect circle where the beam had manifested. Slowly, he rose and turned. He had lived this moment a thousand times, and never once had she been there. His eyes found his enemy and suddenly Rashenar understood: “Dolon,” he snarled.
Dolon had never expected to face the Ripper a second time. Rashenar had Fractured her, or tried to at least. But for some reason she could not explain, Dolon had not been Fractured. Instead she had become something else. The others like her called themselves Unbroken and they sought revenge on their maker. Dolon’s disruption of his ritual was only the first act of that revenge.
“Away with you!” Rashenar commanded, regaining his balance. “You…” his words trailed off as he tried to remember what to say, but still this stream of time was unknown to him, “You… do not belong to this time!”
“Ironic, Ripper,” Dolon countered, “considering that your fractures are but wounds in time.” As she spoke, the druid drew heavily upon the well of power the Unbroken had lent her and it surged into her. Her skin alight with pins and needles and her mind full of the rage of thousands of Unbroken, she unleashed their power into the world as she mocked, “Let the storm reclaim you, weakling.”
With her words a mighty storm arose. Winds howled about the building where Donnil lay, tearing its roof away and letting in the rains. Great drops of rain hammered down, obscuring vision, and through the downpour came lightning lancing out of the sky. A dozen bolts, each striking Rashenar in quick succession.
The voidreaver staggered beneath the assault. As the rain transformed into fist-sized balls of hail, he crumpled to the ground, his arms wrapped about his head in a vain attempt to protect himself. In the midst of the chaos, Dolon stood in a bubble of perfect calm, Donnil beside her.
Again and again she called lightning to strike Rashenar, the wind and hail never relenting. Over and over Rashenar rose, hatred in his eyes, but each time she drove him back to the ground. At last, just as Dolon felt the power within her begin to wane, the voidreaver’s form folded in on itself, and then dematerialized.
“No!” Dolon cried out in anger and frustration as her prey vanished. “You can’t escape now!” she hissed, striding to the place he had been. Her anger abated some as she looked about, seeing blood on the ground. He had bled, and badly. At least she had hurt him.
Picking up the Divine Seed from where Rashenar had dropped it, she moved to Donnil and prepared to channel that last bit of power remaining to her. “I will take you to them,” she said quietly.
As she spoke, the Divine Seed drifted from her, settling into the form of Donnil. For a moment his entire body shimmered. Then his eyes opened, even as Dolon cast her awareness through the veil of space and time. Her mind quested outward, following the resonance patterns Donnil had unknowingly created, until they settled like a mantle on the one called Usef Garrich.
Her anchor found, Dolon consumed the last of her magical energy, pulling Donnil and herself through a rift in space and time.
One moment Usef had been blinking beneath the assault of an overwhelming light, and the next he stood amidst rubble that had once been Donnil’s resting place. The room was destroyed, lightning scars marring the floor.
Usef did not understand what had happened, but he could tell that he was far from his friends. He cast his eyes about and knew, with a clarity born of divine certainty, that he was where he should be. His time with the companions had ended, and his road took him elsewhere.
He reached down, his hand finding the hilt of his arcalilyte greatsword as a renewed purpose filled him. The great burden of his journey with Donnil, the Pyrrics, and all they represented fell away from him. His eyes turned north, towards the great wall of the Tanethel Mountains, and he could feel the call.
The call of redemption.
He had abandoned Tarithan. That was the truth, no matter how harsh it sounded. The excuses he had made—that he was no leader, that Donnil needed him, that he was responsible for the Pyrrics—none of it held power over him any longer. Usef would not let his history with the Pyrrics melt his loyalty to the land of ice.
“I will take my place as the next Lord of Tarithan,” he said aloud as he moved out of the ruined building and began his long journey home.