Ash slid down the sail of the Sea Ghost to scoop up the fallen silver blade. He could feel the magic within the metal as he chopped down Ryparin’s assailant and then pivoted to bring a reverse cut down on the shadow vexing Proxen at the Sea Ghosts’ mast. Pressure relieved, Ryparin had no sooner called his god’s power down to aid another party member when Ash felt the presence of a foe behind him. Ash accepted that the blow would cut him already turning into the blade to prevent true harm and deliver a devastating upwards slice when he felt something severed…
…Ash wakes upon sand in darkness. At first he thinks he is on a beach under a night’s sky but familiarity brings it home. He is back on the Sands. A pit within a cavern. A trick of light causing the glow from a cave mouth far above to shine down upon the fighting ring. Here he fought, lost and won, against beast and man for the promise of another day, then another meal, and ultimately just another moment of life. It was here that he despaired and learned the true nature of things.
He rises and sees that all is not as it was. Cages lining the pit lie open. Creatures within appear worn and fragile. There a rotting arm lies through the metal grate. Instinctively, he looks to the outcropping of rock from which Scorn, son of Grug, son of Gremsch would watch the combats of his own making. The threadbare divan and stained cushions lie fallen in haste. A platter of spoiled food turned over in the corner. Ash wonders at the silence and instinctively looks behind him for attackers but none appear.
Ash turns to the cages and releases each door. From one slinks the blurred outline of a many legged cat with tentacles dragging from its shoulders.
The next holds the rotting corpse of a halfling and Ash is surprised to feel relief that it is not Grim. Ash finds a frail human family in the next, they beg for food and Ash passes some hardtack to them before sending them up from the Sands. In another, at first Ash thinks some predator has expired (from the smell) but he hears the faintest of sounds…chains. Moving in, he sees a man-but-not-a-man weakly reaching for water held forever out of reach by the chain binding it to the wall.
Ash breaks the chain and the creature falls forward into his arms. Ash pours water into its mouth as the beast falls unconscious.
Finally, he comes to the cell he shared with his master. Slow to enter, Ash finds solace and sense of purpose as he moves to the center of this space where his master would sit. He remembers his master’s teaching and his final admonishment “when I’m gone and all is lost, look within”. Ash sees again the duel with his master moving closer to Scorn’s perch, his master’s sudden leap to attack and the speed with which Crunch, Scorn’s ever-present Ogre, snatches his master from the air and dashes his head upon the rocks. As Crunch presses his master’s lifeless corpse above his head to the cheers of the crowd, Ash frees some of the slaves from the Sands and makes his escape in the confusion. Shame floods over Ash. He half rises to seek revenge then he remembers his master’s words “look within”. He sees the rock poking from the sand for the first time though he has walked the cell a thousand, thousand times. Closer, he sees a jade pebble scored and shaped on one side. He digs. He finds a stone with a single cypher in a script he knows but can’t believe.
Ash emerges from the pens and there upon the Sands stands Crunch. In his arms he cradles the shell that Scorn has become. A cough rasps from the orc’s throat. “I see you Thorin. Come to finish our business? You’re too late. Your cell mate’s friends have ended us all. The Nation Gremsch undone by venom and bitter elves…”.
“I go by Ash now, Scorn. Glad to see you looking unwell. Are you ready to meet your gods?”
Racked by a spasming cough, Scorn waves Crunch forward. The Ogre tenderly lowers Scorn to the ground and then releases a cry of rage, frustration, and sorrow before charging.
To the Ash he is now, it appears that Crunch is moving through water. Slow and predictable. He wonders at the fear the beast inspired in him before. Casually, Ash sweeps the leg. Crunch falls like timber and the sands rise and fall around him. As Crunch slowly rises, Ash walks over to Scorn staring into the powerless malevolence of the dying orc’s eyes and ends his pain…Crunch falls to his knees before Ash as chieftain. A tribe of two.
Crunch walks behind Ash carrying a sputtering torch as they descend below the cavern in which the Sands rest. Crunch points the way, leading Ash to the place his master was taken for the Sands. In the maze of tunnels and caverns, the odd couple become lost and lost things are dead things down here. Small elves with darkened skin and the palest of eyes ambush the duo and they are taken.
Ash sits again in a cage amidst his gear but without his weapons. “Fools” he thinks inwardly. Crunch is staked and chained within the cavern. The single sputtering torch dies without warning. The darkness is not natural. From the shadows emerges a woman.
“It carries a silver sword and a key. What is it, I wonder…” She holds Ash’s master’s sword in one hand and the stone Ash found in the Sands. “Let it out. Let’s see if it is a thief or a supplicant”.
Crunch stills, the cell door is opened, and Ash strides forward stretching as he was taught. The woman moves languid yet serpent quick and Ash is lucky to avoid her first swing. She looks at the sword in her hands with disgust. “Clumsy thing!” she spits and drives the blade down across an outcropping of rock shattering his master’s blade. She reaches behind her and into her hand is passed the silver sword but now the blade glows with a dim, blue, fey-light and sings as she tests the weight. In her hand it pours itself from the two handed blade it was into a longsword with a single razor’s edge. This time, Ash is not so lucky. She cuts him. Always she is maddeningly beyond his dwarven reach as she cuts never deeply but always painfully. Just when he feels she must tire of the sport, she whispers to him “Enough”. “You know the steps but not the dance of pain. The key I shall keep until you are worthy. Do you wish to learn the rest or shall we end this farce now?”. Crunch roars from across the room. The woman crosses to him and strikes him quickly in a sequence too intricate to follow. “Any more from you and I will end you from the inside out”. Crunch whimpers and what looks like urine pools at his feet.
“I do not believe that one such as you can learn what we teach. If you would try, we must allow it for you bear the key and this curious blade but I am certain you will fail. Those who fail, we use to teach those who would try. You understand?” Ash assents knowing that he has strayed from the path of his master.]
Ash’s training is brutal (for those he is given to practice upon)and Cyana, his mistress, is both vexed and surprised. “Why do you mimic what you are shown, why can’t you hurt?! Is your pain so precious that only you should bear it!”. Clarity comes to Ash. His strikes become terrifyingly merciful. His practice leaves a deepening pile of limbs and bodies. His defence is now un-assailed by the inconvenience of conflict. As a final test, Ash is placed before Crunch like a child before a man. Crunch is girded for battle in studded leather harness and carrying a great club lined with the shards of his master’s blade. Two dark elves flank Crunch to prevent his escape. Cyana turnsto Ash. “Show me” is all she says. Ash’s blade flashes forward and a shadow of the fey-light it held in Cyana’s hands creeps forth. In a single motion, both elves fall but Smash stands unscathed between them. The blade returns to its scabbard.
Cyana turns to Ash with wry amusement. “Unexpected…but not without precedent”. She hands Ash the key, her hands resting longer than needed on his arm. “Pain is constant and this Vlaakith has disrupted the shadows needlessly. We will be watching, with interest, Ash…”. Then she is gone within shadows. It is a long time before Ash accepts they are alone.
The duo emerge from the Sands into sunlight. As they move through the wilderness, Ash reconciles the dance of pain with the omnipresent cycle of life. They are two sides of the same mirrored glass. He also becomes aware that they are followed
It is clear that Vlaakith rules here now. People keep their distance and scurry away at the sight of their approach (also Crunch is an ogre so there’s that). In the mountains, they find a few of Scorn’s tribe who quickly wish to join the safety of travelling with Crunch. They send one of the orcs back to the Last Stand to gather any tribes who would rid this world of Vlaakith. In the foothills, they find a goblin worg-rider and a pack mate wounded by Vlaakith’s minions. Ash uses his potion of healing to restore the worg and their band grows. The goblin rider offers to seek aid from hobgoblin “overseers”. The pack mate, reluctantly accepting the name, Tor, stays close to Ash.
In the foothills, a small band ambushes the company but are convinced otherwise by the family of humans freed by Ash, now travelling with them. A dwarven scout agrees to join Ash to search for Lord Gilead.
The scouts had been sent to meet Lord Gilead but he failed to arrive. In the forests, the scout too becomes aware of being followed but is unable to sight whatever it may be. Finally, as they come to the mountains’ edge, they find a dead guard blue drake and locate it’s nest in a copse of trees nearby. The eggs within are ravaged but one small egg remains unharmed. Famed for their loyalty, guard drakes were thought to be gone from this world. Ash, thinking of Nyneve and his oath to Morgan and Alandra, picks up the egg and wraps it for warmth and protection before tucking it away in his satchel.
In a hamlet by a strong river, the band learns that Lord Gilead was recently seen on the far bank. Further downstream, a miller claims to have hidden Lord Gilead and his companions within a pile of grain. He points Ash in the direction the Lord left. Finally, they come upon an old tower built in the same style as the castle Ash defended at the outset of this crazy adventure with Kildrak and the rest. There the band of Ash is greeted by the Gilead’s Company. The strange bedfellows know their fates are intertwined. Gilead’s second, a woman of exceeding beauty takes Ash to the tower roof to meet Lord Gilead.