1. Sarilian

one

Sarilian

From his position in the front rank of Celestial soldiers, Sarilian stared into the Void.

Several hundred paces still separated him from that violet curtain of pure nothingness, but that already felt far too close. The luminescent plains of the Dawnlands stretched across the space between, shimmering like liquid mercury beneath the ever-present glow suffusing the air.

Even with all his training, a shiver racked his flesh. The Void represented the inverse of ordered reality—an eldritch realm of chaos and madness, inhabited by abominations who sought to unmake the universe into infinite oblivion.

Sarilian didn't know where the Void came from. So far as he was aware, no one did. All he could be certain of was that it had to be stopped, and that he, along with every other Immortal, had sworn to hold it at bay.

Anxious anticipation roiled his gut when a figure emerged from further down the Celestial frontline. Their armored footfalls echoed off the plains. The brilliant light emanating from their breastplate would have been blinding had Sarilian still been mortal. Despite the past years he'd spent under the figure's tutelage, he couldn't help the awe that filled him at the sight of Darius, Dawn Aspect of Justice, facing his assembled troops.

"My brothers and sisters in the Light," Darius began, his magically amplified voice ringing out loud and clear over the silver plains. "We come to honor the Covenant, as we have for countless millennia. Though voidspawn seek to invade the world of Allaria, humanity need not fear, for you are here to protect them. You are the shield that will keep them safe—the blade that shall strike down their foes!"

The soldiers to either side of Sarilian straightened their backs and adjusted their grips on their shields and spears of light. Sarilian did the same, careful to keep his spear pointed upward to avoid entangling it with his comrades' weapons.

Darius's stern gaze roved over the gathered Celestial soldiers. "For many of you, this is another battle in the Covenant you have sworn to uphold until either the Void or time itself cease to be." His gaze settled on Sarilian, who tried not to squirm. "For others, this will be your final test as an initiate—your first true brush with the horrors of the Void. Either way, I have faith that you will make yourselves and your people proud."

The Aspect looked away, and Sarilian struggled to tamp down his sudden nerves. Darius wouldn't have brought you along if he didn't think you were ready , he chided himself. Desperate for a distraction, he ran through his mental checklist for the dozenth time.

Hold formation. Use swift jabs to keep the voidspawn back. Reserve your magic for emergencies. When you need a break, switch out with someone behind you. Do not try to be a hero—the instant your dawnflame gets low, call for a swap. And if a void lord appears…

Sarilian swallowed, remembering Darius' grim expression when he'd spoken of the elder voidspawn and the threat they posed. Most voidspawn were weak enough for a single Celestial to handle easily so long as they didn't allow themselves to get swarmed. But void lords were different. Larger and stronger than their lesser brethren, they required skill, coordination, or both to defeat. Darius had warned him to leave such fiends to the more experienced warriors, and he was happy to oblige.

"This is it! Prepare yourselves!"

Darius' shout startled Sarilian into almost dropping his spear. The soldier to his right—another recruit named Hilana—shot him an annoyed glare.

She's probably as nervous as I am.

Murmuring an apology, he offered her a reassuring smile as he stared past Darius to the swirling portal that now marred the otherwise unbroken tapestry of pristine emptiness delineating the boundary with the Void.

Void gates always heralded a voidspawn incursion. Most were no bigger than a door, but this one was almost triple that. Though there was no way to be certain what a gate contained until it opened—an incursion could be anywhere from several voidspawn to several thousand —the portal's substantial size suggested a grueling fight ahead.

A tense silence descended on the soon-to-be battlefield. Sarilian and the other Celestials stood with their spears raised at rest as they waited. Each of them glowed with a golden aura courtesy of the dawnflame that comprised their Immortal bodies and lent them strength.

Can voidspawn feel fear? Sarilian hoped so. Maybe the sight of over a hundred radiant warriors of the Light would send them scurrying back to the abyss they had crawled out of.

Without warning, the violet portal's roiling energy surged outward a dozen paces like an expanding bubble before swiftly retracting. In its wake, it left behind a jagged hole in the Void's surface, all impossible angles that seemed to twist back on themselves. Clenching his jaw, Sarilian averted his gaze to stop his head from throbbing at the alien wrongness of it.

Ghoulish shrieks rent the air. A heartbeat later, the soldiers were no longer alone.

The creature that shambled from the gate vaguely resembled a hound, with ten legs and an eyeless face taken up almost entirely by a circular maw bristling with teeth. Thin cracks skittered across its pale, sickly purple flesh. Little bursts of violet ichor oozed from the cracks like pus from an infected wound.

"Shields up, spears ready!" Darius conjured his own dawnflame spear as he returned to his position further down the line. In near perfect harmony, Sarilian raised his shield and lowered his spear along with the rest of the front rank of soldiers, creating a bristling wall of needles facing their foe.

The hound-like abomination appeared undeterred. It loped forward, its gait starting off slow and awkward before gradually picking up speed, as if the voidspawn needed to get used to using its legs. In seconds, it had bridged the gap between them.

Sarilian waited for it to do something—to react somehow to the hundred spears poised to strike it down. Yet, the voidspawn didn't even seem to notice the resistance. It kept coming in that same loping gait until it reached the frontline to Sarilian's right.

Spears thrust at it, and the beast let out an unnatural shriek as dawnflame pierced its flesh. One spear took it in the side, throwing it off-balance, while two more caught it in the stomach. Even while skewered, the voidspawn flailed to press on until a final thrust through its skull pinned it to the silver earth. Its corpse burst apart in a spray of violet ash.

Sarilian released a pent-up breath. That hadn't been so bad.

"Is that it?" someone behind Sarilian asked, echoing Sarilian's thoughts. "Just one?"

"It's never just one," Arem, an older Celestial to Sarilian's immediate left, grunted.

Sure enough, another of the hound-like abominations shambled from the open portal. This time, however, it didn't come alone. More monstrous hounds poured forth in its wake. Other varieties of voidspawn soon followed. Hulking bears that shambled on their hind legs, their bodies coated in eyes rather than hair. Sleek felines with tentacles in lieu of legs that undulated from side to side in a slithering advance.

A dozen—a hundred—and still the voidspawn kept coming.

Sarilian squeezed his spear shaft to keep his hands from trembling. No amount of training could have prepared him for this . Each new voidspawn he spied was even more horrific than the last. Such abominations shouldn't exist in a sane world. He supposed they didn't—not until their foul essence fled the Void and congealed here into physical forms.

The ceaseless tide of voidspawn had yet to abate when the first of them swept forward in a devouring tide of violet. Their chittering wails choked the air. Sarilian's chest tightened, Darius' words replaying in his head. You are the shield that will keep them safe—the blade that shall strike down their foes!

Should the Celestials fail, there would be nothing stopping the voidspawn from slipping through the Shroud and invading the Mortal Realm. This was his sacred duty—the Covenant to which his mortal self had pledged its soul even if he no longer remembered why. Whatever it took, until the last of his dawnflame went out, he would stand and fight.

Sarilian joined his voice to his companions' wordless battlecry as the wave of voidspawn crashed into their line. Claws scraped off his shield while jaws rent at it in flashes of violet light. Though his shield held against the assault, each blow ate away at the dawnflame sustaining it. He expended some of his reserve to reinforce the magic even as he thrust his spear with practiced precision. Around him, his comrades did the same.

Triumph surged through him when he saw his spear impale a cat-like horror, only for the emotion to dampen when two more abominations instantly took its place. The voidspawn ranks seemed endless, reinforcements continuing to pour from the gate.

Further down the line, he caught a flash of light and risked a brief glance to see one of the larger bear-like voidspawn reeling beneath a barrage of conjured fire. "Steady!" Darius's amplified voice somehow remained audible over the deafening din of battle. "Remember your training! Let this tide of aberrations break across our bulwark of light!"

Sarilian gritted his teeth and did as his mentor commanded—he held. Narrowing his focus to only the voidspawn in front of him, he slowly fell into the rhythm of the fight.

Block, thrust, recover.

Block, thrust, recover…

Occasionally, a voidspawn scored a lucky hit, rending his chest past his shield or tearing into his exposed arm. Thankfully, however, none proved too serious to mend with his dawnflame. Other Celestials in the front began to swap out with those in reserve, but Sarilian remained stubbornly in place. So long as he had enough energy to keep fighting, he wasn't going anywhere.

"Look out!" someone shouted.

A shadow swooped over Sarilian, and he ducked instinctively as a pair of massive talons raked the air where his head had been. Glancing up, he spied a mockery of a dragon pass overhead, its tattered leathery wings ablaze with violet voidflame. Its neck ended in a thick tangle of tentacles, each writhing appendage lined with fangs. The creature dwarfed the other voidspawn they'd seen so far, making those monsters seem like harmless pests.

A void lord!

Horror constricted Sarilian's chest as the pseudo-drake lashed out with its tendrils, engulfing Hilana while she was distracted fighting beside him. She screamed, conjuring a blast of dawnflame to batter the creature, but the void lord didn't seem fazed. It ignored the spears jabbing at its flanks and rose on a gust of voidflame, dragging the unfortunate Celestial with it.

Sarilian kept his eyes trained on the void lord, hefting his spear to throw. It was a long shot, but he had to do something . Perhaps if he caught the abomination in one of its tentacles, he could at least force it to drop its prey.

"Hold your positions!" Darius screamed. "If the line buckles, then so do we!"

Merciful Light! Sarilian reluctantly lowered his spear, his arm trembling with a sense of helplessness. Darius was right—what good would it do to save one soldier if it meant sacrificing yet more when voidspawn penetrated their ranks?

Clenching his jaw, he turned back to the battlefield in time to hastily raise his spear and impale a leaping voidspawn upon it. He heaved its dissolving body aside with a grunt.

Do your duty. Whatever happens, just do your duty .

A scream echoed from above. Though he knew he shouldn't, he couldn't stop himself from glancing up. His gaze locked on the void lord as it ripped the captured Hilana apart. Her screams abruptly cut off, what remained of her dissolving into a haze of golden light.

Mere seconds later, a radiant figure held aloft on blazing wings of dawnflame collided with the void lord in midair. Sarilian's breath caught. Darius . The Aspect of Justice shone like a holy beacon above the battlefield, each blow of his spear accompanied by a thunderous boom and a crackling shockwave of light.

Sarilian forced his gaze away, trusting in Darius. He allowed himself only a brief bow of his head for Hilana's sacrifice. She had fulfilled her oath and earned her rest in the Great Beyond. Now, it was time for Sarilian to do the same.

Panicked shouts drew his attention toward where Darius had stood before he engaged the void lord. At first, confusion gripped Sarilian when he saw empty space among the ranks. Where had the soldiers there gone? Then, he caught the fading flickers of light, saw the wounded writhing on the ground as they called upon dawnflame to mend their torn flesh and shattered bones.

Amid the bodies stood a massive voidspawn as wide across as a man and at least three times as tall. Unlike the other, more bestial voidspawn, this one possessed the likeness of a human, which only made the differences all the more appalling.

Its limbs were too long, its legs segmented like an insect's while its claw-like hands hung low enough to brush the earth. Wriggling patches of tentacles stood out along its flesh like sores, with more bristling along the top of its head in place of hair. Where a mouth should have been, there were only eyes, dozens of them in varying colors and sizes. When the creature raised its hands, Sarilian's stomach turned at the sight of a fanged mouth set into each palm.

Light protect us…

The Celestial army had been well-trained. Already, soldiers rushed to fill in the hole left by their fallen brethren, but it was like trying to contain an avalanche. The void lord—for that's what this abomination had to be—lunged with inhuman speed, absorbing a dozen spear strikes as it sent the reinforcements scattering. Lesser voidspawn surged into the gap, and in an instant, the Celestial line had buckled, the ordered ranks around the void lord dissolving into chaos that quickly rippled outward as more voidspawn filled the breach.

A pair of those hound-like voidspawn took advantage of the confusion to overpower Arem on Sarilian's left, who let out a cry as he collapsed. Cursing, Sarilian bashed the two voidspawn aside with his shield before hurling his spear to skewer another mid-lunge. Holding his hand out to his side, he reformed a fresh spear from his dawnflame, sweeping its shaft around him to clear a space and give the fallen soldier time to recover.

Hope bolstered him when he saw Arem and his other comrades rallying. Their lines might be in shambles, but the battle wasn't lost yet. No voidspawn incursion had ever breached beyond the Dawnlands' outskirts, and he intended to ensure today would be no different.

Sarilian impaled the nearest voidspawn with a clean thrust to the chest before spinning to catch another in the throat while fending off a counterattack from his flank with his shield. He didn't waste time with unnecessary flourishes, keeping each strike quick and efficient as he flowed from foe to foe like the complex steps of a well-choreographed dance.

A fierce calm settled over him, instinct and training guiding his hand as surely as the Light burning bright in his breast. Only when he went to strike and found no foes left within range did he realize that the flood of voidspawn from the gate had slowed to a trickle. Somehow, they had weathered the storm.

But even though his immediate vicinity was secured, hundreds more abominations still littered the battlefield—including the void lord that had almost broken their line. Sarilian tightened his grip on his spear, recalling Darius' warnings.

Yet the Aspect of Justice still hadn't returned from his clash with the drake, and the other soldiers nearby were busy reforming their ranks while holding back the tide of lesser voidspawn. Besides, the void lord already bore countless wounds across its flesh, leaving it weakened.

Someone has to defeat that thing.

Shoving down his nerves, Sarilian roared a challenge and charged the abomination. If it noticed him, it didn't bother to react as it clenched its fist around a struggling Celestial and lifted him up. There was an awful crunch as the fanged maw in the monster's palm bit through the soldier's armor to the flesh beneath, eliciting a shriek.

Sarilian didn't hesitate, leaping at the beast and driving his spear blade through the void lord's wrist while channeling dawnflame to bolster the blow. An eruption of golden fire severed violet flesh, and the void lord's dismembered limb dissolved in a purple haze. The wounded Celestial that had been in its grip tumbled free, slumping to the ground.

Now Sarilian had the monster's undivided attention. He danced around a sweeping strike from the creature's remaining arm and lunged to stab it in the back, but something slammed into his breastplate. A sharp pain lanced through him as air whistled past. I'm flying , he thought dazedly just before he hit the ground, rolling hard. The Light-blinded voidspawn had kicked him with one of those segmented legs.

Groaning, he picked himself up and took his bearings. The blow had dented his breastplate and flung him free of the main Celestial force. Open silver plains stretched around him, the violet wall of the Void less than a hundred paces to his right.

A deafening roar reverberated from nearby. It didn't take Sarilian long to spy its source. His eyes widened as the void lord broke free of the regrouping Celestials and charged toward him, propelling itself across the battlefield on all fours with its remaining arm and the stump of its sliced limb.

Swallowing his fear, Sarilian went to resummon the weapons he'd lost in his fall. Faint wisps of dawnflame flickered over his hands, and his stomach clenched. His reserve was nearly depleted. What little dawnflame he had left wouldn't be enough to survive a prolonged encounter. The best he could hope for was a single, decisive blow.

With a deep breath, he focused the last of his magic into a spear, filling it with dawnflame until it shone nearly as brightly as Darius' had. The void lord was almost upon him, its many eyes narrowed on its prey, when Sarilian gave a silent prayer and hurled his weapon.

The blazing spear streaked through the air like a lightning bolt. It caught the beast in the head, erupting in a great clap of golden light. The monster released a sanity-grating screech, and Sarilian clutched his ears as he fell to his knees. The voidspawn raised its remaining hand, bloody saliva dripping from the maw in its palm, and Sarilian tensed for the blow. Before it could land, the void lord abruptly collapsed.

Relief flooded Sarilian when his eyes settled on the torn stump where the creature's neck had been. Merciful Light, he had done it! Shakily, he rose to his feet, surveying the area. Scattered pockets of fighting remained, but the Celestial lines had begun to recover, healers from the reserves moving among the fallen to tend to their wounds.

The gate itself had vanished. Where the unnatural hole had been, only the smooth, unbroken violet of the Void remained. It would take hours yet to hunt down any voidspawn survivors that had fled the battle, and a few always managed to slip away into the outskirts, but the Celestial forces had contained the worst of the invasion.

Victory was theirs.

Nearby movement drew his eye, and Sarilian turned to find a pack of voidspawn stalking away from the fighting. No, not away from the fighting , he realized, his heart sinking. Toward him . They must have sensed easier prey, isolated as he was from the rest of his brethren.

"Hey!" he shouted, waving his hands. "Over here!" But he had no dawnflame to enhance his voice as Darius had done, and his closest comrades were focused on finishing their own battles. No one seemed to notice the lone Celestial other than the voidspawn creeping ever closer.

So much for celebrating. Struggling to tamp down his growing alarm, he considered his options. He could try to bolt past the voidspawn to regroup with his people, likely getting drawn into a fight he wasn't sure he'd win. He could stand his ground against the approaching voidspawn and definitely get drawn into a fight he wasn't sure he'd win. Or…

Or I can live to fight another day .

With that thought racing through his head, Sarilian turned and ran.