Location: Within the Fortress of Aethelburg, The Wild Lands of the North | Year: 8003 A.A.
If you have ever been inside a great stone house during a thunderstorm, when every crack of lightning seems to shake the very foundations and the walls groan like a ship at sea, then you will have some notion of what it felt like to stand within the Fortress of Aethelburg while the battle raged outside. The shockwaves of clashing demigods reverberated through the obsidian walls like the pounding of a giant's fist against a coffin lid—slow and rhythmic and altogether dreadful. Dust trickled from ancient rafters that had not seen the light of day in a thousand years. Cracks webbed across mosaic floors depicting scenes of conquest and sorrow, so that a conquering king's face suddenly split in two, and a weeping captive's tears became a jagged line of broken tile. The entire fortress groaned with each distant impact, a wounded beast awaiting its final blow, and if you had been listening closely you might have fancied you could hear it breathing.
Within the corridors, chaos reigned in orderly fashion—which is to say, it was the sort of chaos that comes from soldiers who are terrified but still remember their training. White foxes in frigid armor dashed through passageways, their disciplined formations barely containing the terror that flickered in their ice-blue eyes.
"Quick! Clear the area! Evacuate all non-essential personnel to the lower levels!" a grizzled commander shouted, and his voice echoed off walls that had not heard panic in millennia, not since the fortress was first raised from the frozen earth. "Nothing may be left of this fortress when that battle ends! Move, move, MOVE!"
Boots clattered on polished obsidian. Doors slammed with a sound like iron jaws closing. Orders were barked and obeyed with the swiftness that comes from long practice and short tempers. Within minutes, the long corridor fell silent—empty of all save the distant thunder of war and the settling groan of strained stone. The stillness that followed was the sort of stillness that makes you hold your breath without knowing why.
Or so it seemed.
In the supposed quiet, a slight wind picked up. Now, you might think a wind in an enclosed corridor is nothing remarkable—a draught from a broken window, perhaps, or the sigh of a dying ventilation shaft. But this wind was different. It was a focused, deliberate current, a whisper of air that did not scatter the dust but gathered it, that did not howl but coiled in the centre of the abandoned hallway like a cat settling into a favourite chair. And from that coiled air, as naturally as a thought becoming a word, Trevor Maymum solidified.
He appeared mid-stride, as if he had been walking this whole time and merely chose this moment to become visible again. His amber eyes swept the corridor with the casual assessment of a shopper scanning market stalls for the best price on fruit. He nonchalantly dusted a few errant specks of ice from his shoulders, flexing fingers that had been nothing but moving air moments before, and the gesture was so ordinary, so utterly mundane, that it was almost comical in that place of frozen dread.
"Took them long enough," he muttered, and his voice was a quiet ripple in the oppressive silence—the sort of ripple that a pebble makes when dropped into a very deep and very dark pond.
He took a moment to survey his surroundings properly. The chamber—for it was more than a mere corridor, opening as it did into a wide antechamber—was a study in controlled malevolence. Tapestries hung on the walls, and if you had seen them in a museum you might have admired the craftsmanship, for the stitching was exquisite and the colours, though faded, still held a somber richness. But the scenes they depicted were not heroic deeds or beautiful landscapes. They showed battles won through treachery—a knife in the dark, a poisoned cup, a treaty signed and immediately broken. They showed cities burning with cold fire, the flames rendered in threads of silver and pale blue. And they showed faces frozen in moments of ultimate despair, their agony preserved in intricate thread for eternity, so that you could not look at them without feeling a small cold hand close around your heart. The floor beneath Trevor's feet was polished obsidian, so reflective that it showed his own face staring back at him—but the reflection seemed slightly wrong. The eyes were too dark. The smile was too cruel. He looked away quickly, the way you look away from a mirror in a haunted house. Braziers lined the walls, but their flames burned a faint, sickly amethyst, and the shadows they cast moved independently of the light source, sliding along the walls like living things that did not wish to be seen.
CRRRRUUUMBLE.
The fortress shuddered violently. It was a deep, visceral tremor that cracked a nearby pillar from floor to ceiling and sent a shower of black dust cascading onto Trevor's head. He coughed, waving it away with both hands, and the gesture was so thoroughly put-upon that you might have thought he was a housecat who had been splashed with bathwater.
'The mana signatures I'm picking up…' His thoughts raced as he moved toward the far end of the hall, his bare feet making no sound on the cold stone. 'Adam is taking on the Shadow and Zuberi. One Askun alone would be a trial for any of us Grand Lords. But both? With an Arya between them?' He shook his head, and there was a grim admiration flickering in his chest. 'That wolf cub has grown thorns. I'll have to hurry. He's buying me time with his life.'
He broke into a silent run. His feet, as I have said, made no sound on the reflective floor, for a monkey who does not wish to be heard is very difficult to hear indeed. His mind replayed the mental map he had constructed during his infiltration as wind—a map stitched together from currents and drafts and the subtle resistance of air against hidden doors.
'I scouted most of this place while formless. There were places in this fortress I couldn't penetrate—chambers hidden from light, voids where even air fears to tread. If the Aktil rune is anywhere, it will be in one of those.'
He approached a massive door at the corridor's end. It was black iron banded with silver, and the symbols etched upon its surface seemed to writhe if you stared at them too long. He reached for the handle, his fingers closing around the cold metal, his mind already racing ahead to what lay beyond.
WHAM!
The world exploded into pain. Trevor stumbled backward as though he had walked into a wall—only the wall had walked into him—and his hand flew to his forehead with a slap that echoed down the empty corridor. He collapsed onto his tail with an undignified thump, and if you have ever seen a dignified person fall over, you will know that the indignity is almost always worse than the injury.
"OOWWW!!! My head!!!" The exclamation was part genuine agony and part theatrical outrage, the sort of cry a performer gives when he has been upstaged and wants the audience to know it. He blinked up through watering eyes, and the world swam back into focus.
A figure was before him, silhouetted against the amethyst brazier-light.
It was a white fox tracient. Young—not a child, for there was nothing childish in the set of his shoulders or the steadiness of his gaze, but not yet the weathered veteran Trevor had half-expected to find guarding these inner halls. He was perhaps on the cusp of adulthood, that strange and trembling threshold where the boy is not quite gone and the man has not quite arrived. His fur was pristine white, untouched by the dust and chaos that clung to everything else in this groaning fortress, and his eyes were a deep, startling blue. The kind of blue that reminded Trevor, with a painful lurch, of Adam's aura—the blue of a tropical sea under a noon sun, the blue of hope and defiance and a fire that had not yet been extinguished by the Shadow's chill. The fox's face wore the same pained expression as Trevor's own, the universal wince of two people who have just collided at full speed around a blind corner. Then, in rapid succession, that expression morphed: first to confusion, then to shock, then to a cold, calculating fear that sat strangely on such young features.
In an instant, the fox was on his feet, legs braced in a combat stance. His hand flashed to his side and drew a sword—a slender, curved blade that gleamed with an edge so fine it seemed to thin the air around it, the way a very sharp knife makes you flinch even before it touches you.
Trevor sighed, and the theatrical pain faded into genuine weariness. 'I was hoping to avoid this. Killing kids was never my preferred pastime.'
He rose slowly and deliberately, keeping his hands visible and relaxed, the way you might approach a frightened animal. "Look, little one. I don't want to hurt yo—"
The fox moved.
It was not the charge of a reckless youth, all fury and no form. It was a calculated, perfectly executed closing of distance, his body low and streamlined, his blade extended in a thrust aimed directly at Trevor's heart. A textbook attack. A straightforward thrust of the sort they teach on the first day of any decent swordsmanship class.
'Typical,' Trevor thought, and his mind was already planning the gentle disarmament—a twist of the wrist here, a tap on the shoulder there, and the boy would be on the ground wondering what had happened. 'Youngsters always go for the—'
His eyes widened.
The sword left the fox's hand. It did not fall or wobble; it flew through the air as a guided missile, spinning in a perfect, deadly arc directly for Trevor's skull. And at the same instant, the fox's now-empty hands curled into fists, and his body continued its forward momentum, closing the gap while Trevor was distracted by the airborne blade.
Trevor's honed instincts screamed a warning. He sidestepped the sword by a hair's breadth, feeling its wind kiss his cheek like the cold finger of a ghost. But in that same motion, the fox's fists—both fists, actually, a double-handed hammer blow—slammed into the crossed guard Trevor barely had time to form with his forearms.
BAM!
The impact was staggering. Trevor's guard shattered—not broken, but overwhelmed, his arms driven apart by pure, focused force as if a battering ram had been swung into his chest. The follow-through of the fox's strike carried on, a palm thrust that connected solidly with Trevor's sternum and sent him sliding back several feet across the polished obsidian. His tail lashed out for balance, and he caught himself just before he fell.
The fox landed lightly, breathing hard but steady, and he was already reaching for a second blade concealed at his back. His blue eyes never left Trevor's face.
Trevor stood frozen for a long moment—not from injury, though his arms were still tingling, but from sheer, incredulous shock.
'He used the sword as a feint,' his mind raced, analyzing and re-analyzing what had just happened. 'A feint I should have seen coming. And the real attack was his fist. He planned to end this in one hit. One hit! And that punch… ' His arms still tingled from the force, a pins-and-needles sensation that spoke of near-maximum transfer of kinetic energy. 'Not even the Golgev have caught me off guard like that. And now that I think about it…'
He focused his senses, reaching out with the perception that came naturally to a Grand Lord—the inward ear that listens to the music of mana, the inward eye that sees the colours of power.
Nothing.
He could not sense the fox's mana signature at all. Even now, standing face to face in this dim corridor, it was as if the boy did not exist. Only during the collision, in the brief moment of physical contact, had Trevor felt his Yakit—a flare of immense, controlled power, there and then gone, like lightning illuminating a hidden landscape for a single heartbeat before the dark rushed back in.
'Mana manipulation on par with a Narn Lord,' Trevor realized. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. 'Probably on par with us Grand Lords. Hidden in a child, inside the Shadow's own fortress. What have we here?'
He tilted his head, and his amber eyes glinted with something between appraisal and genuine delight. "Tell me, son of Aktil," he said, and his voice carried none of the condescension one might expect—only curiosity, sharp and bright as a new blade. "What is your name?"
The fox hesitated. His blade was still raised, his blue eyes still narrowed with suspicion, and the scowl on his young face was a wall of defiance that had been carefully built and would not easily be torn down. "I have no business telling an enemy my name."
"Oh, come on." Trevor spread his hands, the picture of wounded innocence, and if you had not known he was one of the most dangerous beings in all of Narn, you might have thought he was genuinely hurt. "Don't be a bad sport. Here, I'll start. My name is Trevor Maymum."
The fox's expression did not change. The scowl remained firmly in place.
Trevor shrugged, dropping his hands with a sigh that was almost theatrical. "Fine, fine. I suppose you get to know more about a person from the way they brawl anyway." He settled into a relaxed, open stance—not a guard, but an invitation, the way a dancer invites a partner onto the floor. "Shall we continue our conversation in the universal language?"
The fox's eyes flickered—the barest hint of something that might have been respect, or might have been curiosity, or might have been the quiet recognition of one warrior meeting another. Then he moved.
***
If you have ever watched a master potter at his wheel—how his hands seem to know exactly where the clay will go before it goes there, how the shape emerges not from force but from a kind of listening—then you will have some small picture of how Trevor moved through the fox's second assault. For the young warrior came at him now with a fury that was nothing like his first, calculated strike. He came in low, his recovered sword held in a reverse grip, and his movements were a fluid dance of aggression that had learned from its earlier failure. He had discovered, in that first exchange, that Trevor was fast and experienced and not to be underestimated. So he would not rely on singular tricks this time. He would build a net of attacks, each one flowing into the next, until the monkey had nowhere left to slip.
He closed the distance with a series of rapid, zigzagging steps—a footwork pattern that would have confused an ordinary opponent's depth perception, making it seem as though he were in three places at once. His blade lashed out in a horizontal arc aimed at Trevor's knees, and the strike was meant to force a downward dodge, to drive the monkey toward the ground where the fox's follow-up kick would be waiting.
Trevor, however, did not dodge downward. He flowed upward, his body seeming to fold and unfold in a motion that defied every sensible law of anatomy. He leaped over the blade with centimeters to spare, and as he passed above the fox, his hand reached down and gently tapped the top of the young warrior's head—a gesture so casual, so utterly unhurried, that it bordered on the insulting. It was the sort of tap an older brother might give a younger one during a game of tag.
The fox spun on his heel, already recovering, and his eyes blazed with indignation. He responded with a flurry of thrusts—three, four, five of them—each aimed at a different vital point, each delivered with a precision that would have made a fencing master nod in grudging approval. The first went for the throat. The second for the heart. The third for the liver. The fourth and fifth for the eyes, one after the other, so fast they were nearly simultaneous.
Trevor danced through them. I do not use the word "danced" lightly, for there was something almost musical in the way he moved. He did not dodge so much as avoid, his body shifting just enough that each blade-tip passed through empty air where his flesh had been a heartbeat before. His expression remained one of mild, academic interest, the way a scholar might watch a particularly promising student defend a thesis that was not quite ready for publication. And as the fifth thrust whistled past his ear, he murmured, almost to himself, "Good. Very good. But you're telegraphing your hips."
The fox's eyes widened fractionally. It was the first crack in his stoic facade, and it was not a crack of fear but of something more complicated. He was being taught. In the middle of a fight that might well end with his death, this strange ape—this intruder, this enemy—was giving him pointers. The indignation that surged through him was hot and sharp, and he channeled it into his speed, his blade becoming a silver blur that sang through the frigid air.
Then the fox changed tactics. He was quick of mind, this young warrior, and he recognized that raw speed alone would not suffice against an opponent who moved like wind. He needed unpredictability. He lunged forward with all his might—and then stopped mid-lunge, reversing his momentum with an agility that seemed to belong more to a swallow than to a fox. His sword swept up in a rising arc that would have opened Trevor from hip to shoulder, and the stroke was immediately followed by a spinning back-kick aimed at the monkey's temple. It was a combination that flowed from blade to body without a seam, the sort of combination that takes years to perfect and a lifetime to forget.
Trevor leaned back, letting the sword whistle past his chin close enough to stir the fur, and then tilted his head exactly enough for the kick to breeze past his ear. He did not counter. He simply watched, his eyes bright with a growing appreciation that was no longer academic but something warmer.
'He's adapting', Trevor realized, and the thought brought with it a quiet thrill. 'Mid-combat, he's analyzing my patterns and adjusting.' Do you know how rare that is? Most warriors fight the same fight over and over, and when it doesn't work they simply fight it harder. But this one—this one is learning.
The fox, frustrated by the continued evasion, attempted a feint that was far more sophisticated than anything he had shown before. He dropped his shoulder as if preparing a thrust to the chest, a classic opening that any trained fighter would recognize—and then, instead of thrusting, he released his sword entirely. The blade spun in the air, and he caught it with his other hand, reversing his grip and delivering a completely new angle of attack: a descending slash from a quadrant that no one would have expected, a stroke that came from the left when all his previous patterns had favoured the right.
Trevor clapped.
I mean that quite literally. He brought his palms together with a sharp crack, and the fox's blade stopped between them, caught inches from the monkey's face. The metal hummed with trapped momentum, vibrating like a plucked string, and for a long moment the two of them stood frozen in that strange tableau—the young fox straining against the grip, the older monkey holding the blade as easily as you might hold a letter opener.
"Now that," Trevor said, and there was genuine admiration in his voice, the sort of admiration that cannot be faked, "was creative. Where did you learn to switch hands mid-stroke?"
The fox's eyes were wide—not with fear, for he had long since passed beyond fear, but with the shock of someone who has just discovered that the ceiling of his world is far higher than he had ever imagined. He pulled back, wrenching his blade free with a grunt of effort, and retreated two steps. He was reassessing now, his sharp young mind working furiously behind those deep blue eyes.
'He's toying with me', the fox thought, and the realization was bitter as gall. 'This entire time, he's been toying with me. And yet…' He studied Trevor's relaxed stance, his open expression, the complete and utter absence of killing intent that hung about him like a cloak. 'And yet he's not mocking me. He's impressed. Why?'
He decided, then, on a new approach. If precision and trickery would not land a blow—if this monkey could dance through any blade he threw—then perhaps overwhelming volume would succeed where finesse had failed. He sheathed his sword in a single, decisive motion, and the move was so unexpected that Trevor's eyebrow rose in genuine surprise. The fox raised both hands instead, and mana began to gather between his palms. It condensed into swirling orbs of brilliant blue energy—not one, not two, but dozens, forming in rapid succession and hovering in the air around him like a constellation of miniature suns.
"Oh-ho," Trevor breathed, and his interest was no longer academic but keen and sharp as a new blade. "Multi-casting at this density? At your age? That is genuinely impressive."
The fox's face was a mask of concentration. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the fortress's chill, and his hands trembled with the effort of maintaining so many concentrated spheres at once. But he did not falter. With a sharp gesture—a sweeping motion of both arms that seemed to pull the very air with it—he flung the volley.
The mana balls streaked through the corridor like vengeful comets, each one tracking with deadly accuracy. They came from every angle—high and low, left and right, ahead and behind—a net of explosive energy designed to leave no room for evasion, no gap through which even a creature of wind might slip.
Trevor moved. I wish I could describe it to you, but the truth is that he simply was not where the balls were. His body flowed through the gaps in the barrage like water flowing through stones in a stream, each dodge a microscopic adjustment that placed him exactly in the spaces between destruction. His feet traced patterns on the obsidian floor that seemed almost choreographed, a silent dance performed to music that only he could hear, and the whole thing took perhaps three seconds.
The balls passed. Every single one of them. They streaked past him and struck the walls and the floor and the ceiling, and not a single one found its mark. Trevor stopped moving and stood amidst the dissipating energy, his chest rising and falling with the mild exertion of someone who has just finished a brisk walk.
"All that," he said, and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips, "and not one connected. What now, fox?"
Despite everything—despite the frustration of his failed attacks, despite the fear that still coiled in his belly, despite the sheer impossibility of the opponent he faced—the fox's lips twitched. It was a small smile, reluctant and fleeting, but it was genuine.
"I should be asking you that question, ape."
Trevor blinked at the casual insult, and then he chuckled—a warm, rumbling sound that seemed utterly out of place in that cold and dreadful fortress. "Fair enough," he began. "Fair enou—"
He stopped. Above him. Behind him. All around him.
The mana balls had not dissipated. They had simply relocated. While Trevor had been congratulating himself on his dodging, the fox had used the dispersal as cover—the flash and the smoke and the noise—to reposition his entire volley. Now they hovered in a perfect sphere, surrounding Trevor on all sides like a cage of captured stars, their blue light casting his surprised face into sharp and sudden relief.
The fox's hands came together with a decisive clap.
BOOOOOOOM!!!
The explosion was immense. A dome of white fire engulfed the space where Trevor had stood, its fury contained only by the ancient wards woven into the fortress walls—wards that groaned and flickered under the strain. The shockwave rattled teeth and bones and sent fresh cracks racing across the ceiling, and it knocked the fox himself back several steps despite his distance, his ears ringing and his vision swimming.
Smoke. Dust. Silence.
The fox stood panting, his chest heaving, his muscles trembling from the immense strain of maintaining and detonating so many concentrated orbs at once. 'Did I… did I actually…?'
The dust cleared.
Trevor Maymum stood in the center of a cratered floor, exactly where he had been. He was unharmed. A gentle shimmer of protective mana was fading around his form, the last traces of a barrier that had been raised so swiftly and so perfectly that the explosion might as well have been a summer breeze. And his smile—that smile which had been amused before—had grown into something altogether different. It was delight. It was the smile of a collector who has found a treasure he did not know existed, or of a teacher who has discovered a pupil worthy of the name.
"Remarkable," he said, and the word was soft and full of wonder. "I haven't seen such talent amongst my own people. Not in centuries."
He walked forward, stepping out of the crater with a casual grace that made the whole thing seem like a minor inconvenience—a puddle to be stepped over, not a crater to be climbed out of. The fox, despite his exhaustion, despite the trembling in his limbs and the burning in his lungs, immediately raised his fists. He had no sword now and barely enough mana to light a candle, but his will refused to yield. He would fight with his claws if he had to. He would fight with his teeth.
Trevor stopped a respectful distance away. He did not attack. Instead, he did something so unexpected that the fox's fists wavered in mid-air: he placed his right hand over his heart and bowed. It was a formal gesture, the sort of bow a knight gives to a worthy opponent before a tournament, or a lord gives to a visiting dignitary. It was not mockery. It was honour.
"Please, warrior," Trevor said, and his voice had lost all trace of its earlier playfulness. "I want to remember you. I charge you, in the Name of Asalan, to tell me your name."
The fox froze. His fists lowered slowly, inch by inch, as if they were moving of their own accord and against his will. His blue eyes went wide with a light that was neither fear nor defiance, but the dawning of something else entirely. Recognition. It took several long seconds for him to process what he had heard, and when he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, rough with confusion and something that sounded almost like hope.
"That name…" He swallowed hard. "That name you just said. Who… who is he to you?"
Trevor tilted his head, puzzled by the intensity of the reaction. "What? Asalan?" He straightened from his bow, and his expression shifted to one of gentle reverence—the sort of reverence that comes not from fear but from love. "Why, he is the Rising Sun from the Eastern End of the World. The Great Lion who created all things. The One True King over all other kings." He paused, and when he spoke again his voice carried a humility that was rare for one so powerful. "This is as far as we mortals can describe him, anyway. He is much greater than that. Infinitely greater."
The fox stared at him. His eyes moved rapidly, the way eyes move when they are reading a page of invisible text, processing information that conflicted with everything he had been taught and yet resonated with everything he had always, secretly, felt. Worry warred with wonder in those deep blue depths. And beneath it all—beneath the confusion and the hope and the fear—there flickered a quiet, undeniable recognition. The recognition of truth when it is finally spoken aloud, after a lifetime of silence.
He straightened his clothes with hands that trembled slightly.
"I do not know why you are here, Trevor Maymum," he said, and his voice was steadier now.. "However, you must be warned. The fortress is always guarded. Whatever it is you seek is probably here, but the Master's greatest defense is here as well." He paused, and his blue eyes met Trevor's amber ones with a directness that was startling. "I do not know if you will succeed. But I know now that I cannot stop you."
He turned and began running toward the far end of the corridor, his white form a blur against the dark stone, his footfalls the only sound in the sudden stillness.
"Wait!" Trevor called after him, genuinely startled by the sudden departure. "I hope we see each other again! I still didn't get your name!"
The white fox halted at the corridor's end, where the amethyst light of the braziers faded into deeper shadow. He turned, and for the first time since their strange duel had begun, a true smile graced his young features. It was open and warm and touched with a light that seemed to come from somewhere far beyond the Shadow's reach—a light that had been hidden, perhaps, but never extinguished.
"Iltaz," he said, and the name rang in the empty space between them like a bell struck in a silent hall. "I'm Iltaz Aktil."
And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness, leaving Trevor Maymum standing alone in the cratered corridor with a name on his lips and a dozen new questions burning in his mind.