Section Author: 'Yui-chan'

The messenger strode through the hallway, urgency in his every motion and the intense gaze in his pitch-black eyes. Servants scrambled to get out of his path after he had knocked the first young page aside who had moved too slowly, gawking in surprise at the unexpected disturbance. There was obviously something of great importance in the man’s business, and it instantly pricked the curiosity of the entire staff. So little out of the ordinary ever happened here at the castle nestled snugly on the shared border of Aegon’s Nether lands and Yui’s Ascendant ones that the curious whispers were quick to bloom through the grey-stone corridors, spreading along them and into the high-ceilinged space of the Great Hall. The sound buzzed among the assembled men and women breaking their fast until a small figure adorned in green-trimmed white stepped through one of the massive archways that ringed the room. In that second, everyone in the room might well have dropped over dead for the sudden silence that descended.

Yui-chan scanned the room, a certain tension and feverish intensity radiating from her with the palpable air of a flickering flame. Her voice was relatively quiet when she spoke, but it rang like a whipcrack in the expectant atmosphere. “Where is he?”

“I am here, Huntress.” The mysterious messenger spoke from behind her, and she turned, regarding him and the pouch that he carried with a businesslike eye. He returned her gaze boldly, the fathomless depths of darkness in his eyes sending a chill skittering down Yui’s spine. Her sense of dreadful foreboding intensified as he continued. “I must speak with you at once. In private.”

Biting back the urge to shiver, the young woman merely nodded and stepped past him, curtly replying. “Follow me, please.”

As they stepped away from the Great Hall, everyone was too busy speculating on the purpose of his visit to notice that the mysterious messenger strode away on stones completely void of his shadow...

*******

Not even a candlemark later, the Huntress stood in the darkness of the closed stables, saddling her fastest gelding as silently as she could, her dreams and fears forgotten in the glare of her urgency. She whispered comforting words to the spirited beast as she cinched the saddle, knowing that her fear, anger, and tension were making it nervous. When she had tightened the last strap of the plain, leather tack, she turned and lifted the light wood of her favorite elven longbow, slipping the grip into the carrying strap slung over her ebon-cloaked shoulder. Her eyes in the depths of the cowl’s shadows were a window into a churning pool of determination and worry as she attended to her final task, tucking a bloody and torn cloak of heavy black fabric into the horse’s single saddlebag. The dark and dull symbols of what Aegon called the ‘Ancient Words’ that adorned the hem were damaged and warped, but what threatened to free the tears the young woman was holding back was the jagged, blood-lined gash through the complex rune that adorned the center of the back panel of the garment. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she allowed herself one moment to trace the symbol of the Del’rath family - Aegon’s family - with a shaking finger before she stuffed the evidence the rest of the way into the saddlebag and closed it firmly.

On the farthest edge of the forest ringing Yui and Aegon’s castle, a piece of shadow broke free of itself and stepped into a ray of light, illuminating one pale hand gripped tightly around the reins of the gelding that lumbered out after it. Within a heartbeat, the Huntress was mounted and kicking the beast into its fastest gallop out over the gently-rolling hills of her own lands. The wind whipped the ebon cloak around her body, writhing and flashing bits of color like a nightmare struggling to consume her. Oblivious, she shivered with more than just dread in the warmth of the early morning sunshine, her thoughts fixed only on one thing...

Aegon... they have Aegon...

Within, a darkshard of ice and evil stirred, again, growing stronger as the warmth and hope of the lightshard grew weaker...

*******

In the castle, a shadow slid under the door of Aegon and Yui’s chamber and over the warm coverings of the bed, flowing like a living puddle across the surface and down the far side towards the balcony, where it disappeared into the lightless haven of the solid stone railing. Behind it, the pristine white of the sheets was left marred by a square of yellowed parchment with a seal of white wax visible on the front. Above that, in a neatly-formed script that anyone in the castle would recognize, was a familiar word. ‘Aegon’