Prologue

The light of 'Yokyzura's Eyes' pierced Maiyuhi's eyelids as he started to stir from his hammock. Shouts of distress and anguish could be heard now, finally waking Maiyuhi from his slumber. Maiyuhi's sleep had been interrupted yet again that night, first it was the fireflies as it often was. This wasn't just some noise though, something in his being knew that it was deeper that. He couldn't put his claw on it, but he felt a primordial fear in himself. As a Yamachai, his senses were stronger and more connected to the natural world than any other race in the Isles. He knew danger was here.   As he got up from his hammock, got into his gown and looked out of the window, he noticed the two moons, known throughout Yam and Uro as the 'Eyes of Yokyzura', were an unusual colour tonight. Normally, the 'left eye' of Tun was a silver colour, while the 'right eye' of Ria was the colour of rusted iron. But tonight, both seemed to flicker like flames, out of control. This was not a good sign, he reckoned. In all his two hundred and fifty-seven years of training in the arts of the spirits, he had never seen anything like this. His ears pricked downward like those of a cat.   As master of the Order of Shin, Maiyuhi was expected to have greater knowledge of the arcane than anyone else in this building. Shin was more than a training school for those who wished to learn hand to hand combat, but a place of holy pilgrimage for all of the Yamachai. Or at least, that was what it was supposed to be. The Otuma clan made very strict regulations on who could go here for worship, and even stricter ones on who could train in the Order. These expectations always made him ready himself for some sort of violent attack. It would not be the first time someone had wanted the order dead. But what of the moons? What could that be?   Fearing some sort of threat to the Order, Maiyuhi preemptively sharpened the four claws on each hand with each other, and prepared to reach the steel gauntlets he had. If relieved of his blade or club, he would fight bare-handed with claws, and the gauntlets he and the other Shin wore enhanced the Yamachai's existing physical ability for hand to hand. The gloves fit him well, for the years he had trained with them in practise and in combat had made them like second skin to him. In a sense, that was what they were supposed to be. They shone a perfect silver in the light of the moons, and stood out from his other armour, having long lost its shine from use. He lingered on the expert craftsmanship that had gone into these pieces of gear. It took him precious willpower to remember his duties.   He changed into his robes, first putting on lamellar armour underneath them, and put his curved Nyunya sword underneath them too. He rushed down out the corridor to see the spectacle. He needed no lantern, for his large, golden eyes allowed him to see even in very dark conditions, and his hearing was on par with that of the wolves or deer in the forests. The air was still cool here, as it had only recently been the end of winter here, and he could see clouds form as he breathed rapidly. Others came out of their sleeping tents now, he could see. He heard others cry out in fear and confusion, but he was too focused on what was ahead to notice faces now.   "Master! What is the commotion? What is happening in the skies?" The young student Yuka, a youth of a mere thirty-seven years old, shouted. She had recently tattooed white stripes on cheeks, a sign of her new position. She wore a silver set of robes, and he noticed the leather armour underneath them. He needed to look what was ahead more though. She followed Maiyuhi down the flight of stairs.   "I know not." He said under his breath. A human student passing through, named Harry, a youth of sixteen, heard the commotion and also started running. His mop of black hair was in stark contrast to the baldness of all the Yamachai, who were incapable of growing a single hair on their bodies, the taint of the Ancient Ones in their blood. "What are we running from, Sei?" 'Sei' was the title given to the masters of orders within the western Yamachai.   Maiyuhi got down to the bottom of the moonlit halls before turning and explaining to the human boy. "It is not what we are running from, Harry. It is what we are running to that is the concern. Look at the sky!" He pointed up to the open ceiling, which was unusually red and fiery in colour.   The boy looked up as they exited the sleeping chambers. "Sei, I see nothing out of the ordinary. Are you sure-"   "I am very sure." He noted. Other trainees came from throughout the camp to see the commotion. There was much fear among the Yamachai present, panic in their voices. As a human, Harry did not have the connection to the Ancient Ones that Maiyuhi and the Yamachai as a whole did, and so was merely confused by this. Some tint of the ancient magic remained in their race where it had died in all the others.   "What could all this mean, Sei?" Yuka asked. "Red skies at night, the moons flaming, shooting stars-" he had not noticed the latter. "-nothing like this has happened in living memory that I've read about. Is this the end?"   "No. This can't be it." He knew the prophecies about the end, and this wasn't what they were supposed to be. He gathered towards the greater group, who clearly awaited his counsel. Noticing their desire for some comfort, Maiyuhi spoke up. "I sense your discomfort, but panic is not how we respond normally, so why now?" Before someone could simply answer 'this isn't normal', he silenced with a gesture. "This is what we shall do. We scout the parameter for enemies. We take our weapons to the skies if any make any movements. This is no ordinary opponent we face. We must not consider anything out of the question here! Move out!" They did exactly that. "Not you, Yuka. You stay with me." Yuka was one of the best swordswomen he had ever seen among the female Yamachai who had studied and fought here. But now was not the time for sentimentality.   As he moved towards the centre of the corridor, he noticed that the skies were turning red. Something definitely wasn't right. Streaks came through like a meteor shower, little specks of Heaven falling down to earth when the sky cracked. But tonight, it seemed as if they were tearing apart completely. He readied himself for what was coming. Perhaps they were going to fall in the monastery?   "Yuka, I wish you to prepare mentally. This is no ordinary threat we face." As he looked around, he saw fiery embers fall to the ground, larger ones spreading around and starting fires. Panic among the others could be heard.   An explosion occurred. Maiyuhi turned quickly and ordered Yuka to follow with a gesture. Harry knew he could not follow by the shape of the gesture, a thumb and the middle finger pointed out. "Quickly, Yuka! That came from the library!"   Screaming could be heard. The library was being attacked! He ran through towards this next corridor. Fires continued to fall from the heavens. Clearly, people were being burned. Another explosion could be heard elsewhere, as great fires rained down from the skies.   A student ran past them, on fire from head to toe. No fur lay on the Yamachai's bodies, but their clothing and skin still caught fire as the hellish conditions came from the skies. He looked around and saw the burning fragments fall to the earth. But there were no meteorites at the centre? This couldn't be any normal meteorite shower! Magic had to be present here. This was an attack!   Yuka lifted some debri that had fallen on a youngling. He saw that it was Un, one of the youngest of all those training! He was coughing, and it was grey blood that came out. Ash was already in his lungs. "No, no, no, no." She cried as she pulled the boy out. Yuka had only in the last four months taken him on as an apprentice. No master should ever deserve to see their apprentice die before them. Not unless they were a traitor. And poor Un was no traitor. But he was no survivor either. His chest was clearly caved in from the debri, and his lungs would be punctured. There was no way he could have survived in this situation.   "Stand back." He said as he raised his blade. He raised his hand as Yuka opened her mouth to protest. "We cannot save him. Only give him mercy." He unsheathed the sword and, sighing, stuck it straight into Un's heart. He was gone immediately, and Maiyuhi closed his eyelids to ensure his spirit could open its eyes into the next life. He and Yuka moved on as quickly as they could, though his student looked back at the corpse of her student. He knew how it felt to lose a student before, especially one whom he had bonded with, he shared her pain.   The heat was overbearing now, and the smell of charcoal and dust made him want to cry, for it reminded him of how his grandparents had burnt alive in that fire... But now was not the time for that. He needed to be strong for Yuka, and for any other survivors. The domed building that was the library was torn at the ceiling, and seemed to be crisped like a burnt duck with meteorites tearing through it by the second. The normal grey and reddened paint of the library glowed orange and yellow with the flames, which rose taller than the trees. The trees too, making up the decorative garden, were incinerated as the bees that made their home there frantically flew in all directions to escape. The doors, normally steel-locked and impossible for even one of the extinct giants to punch through, were wide open, as if people had fled here. Perhaps people were fleeing into here, Maiyuhi thought. Or was it something worse?   As they walked into the library, Maiyuhi saw many years of great and wonderful literature; books and scrolls alike, destroyed on the floor. More books were thrown around, pages torn out. He saw 'The Lives of Ten High Priests' next to a fire, one of his old favorite books, reached out and handed it to Yuka. "We must preserve what we can," he exclaimed. "The loss of the past will only ruin the future."   Another favourite of his, 'Songs of the Spirit', was already more than half burned, and was beyond saving at this point. The librarian's corpse was present among the books, his eyes burnt out as embers had shredded his fave beyond recognition, his face screaming in silence. As Maiyuhi noticed, some of the books and debri appeared to have been already present, as there was no indication that the explosion knocked these books from their sections. This was not merely an accident. Someone had ransacked the library at the same time as the fire from heaven! Or just before... this was not the looting that occurred after disasters. Too little time had passed.   "Who would do such a thing?" Yuka questioned. "Could the Otuma clan have planted spies here, thinking we would rebel?" Maiyuhi shook his head in shame, ashamed that she could be ignorant of such basic facts.   "How could the Otuma rain fire from the skies, when they arrest upon the mere act of communicating with dead souls? When even the High Priest himself could not move so much as a table chair? I hate Otoryu with all my soul and more, but he could not have been responsible for this. We must find out more." When the two had finished collecting salvageable books, they continued on. Maiyuhi opened the gates to the corridor leading to the main hall.   To witness the corpse of Sei Myuwin, the oldest member of the Order, impaled upon a flaming blade that seemed to devour all the light around it, her mouth twisted into a creeping smile. He had expected death to come to her sooner or later, but not in peacetime, and certainly not like this! And where had this blade come from?   Yuka laid out her hand to grab the blade from Myuwin's body. But as she touched it, it dissolved into dust, then to steam, then nothing. She trembled at what she was seeing. Maiyuhi grabbed her hand. "This is magic. But not on a level that has been seen since millennia ago. Since the times of the Forefathers themselves! We must find other survivors!" For they needed as many survivors and witnesses as possible to escape here. The future cannot afford to lose the past.   As he walked into the hall, he realised that there was only more chaos. The once fine tapestries of gold and red banners that told the stories of many generations of leaders before him, and their quests throughout the isles of the Yamachai and beyond, were burned. The dining tables were overturned, and yet more dead bodies lay, including that of his beloved Homoyi, the patron master of the lord of Hinzol, and Miayuhi's closest friend. Homoyi's body was spread out over one of the table legs, his back broken by an impact. Maiyuhi went up to his old friend, his eyes frozen in terror and shut them. A tear fell from his own eye. He had hardly loved someone more than he had loved Hoyomi.   "See?" He said quietly. "We all have to cope with loss today. This enemy is beyond any I have ever faced. Even civil war has not been as absolute in its destructiveness as thus. I fear we-" he stopped. The board holding up the roof moaned like a slumbering giant. "Get out! Now!" He cried out to Yuka, who rushed forward alongside him, pushing him on. The door out was fortunately made only of wood, and all that kept them in was a barge. "You take that end, I take the other." He said to Yuka. Together, they managed to take what even the toughest Yamachai could not do single handedly- this was by design, so that no haughty individual could lock themselves in. Now it endangered their lives. Not much longer, he thought as he threw the barge to the ground, and as he nodded, the two knocked their way through the wooden doors.   They ran out into the courtyard from the collapsing hall, just away from the tallest tower of the entire Order. A pile of bodies lay, each torn by debri, burned by fire, or impaled on the same spikes as Myuwin had been. The trainees, and the alchemist Yurond, who had once saved Yuka's life from the horrible poisons of the Northern isles! What monstrosity could this be? Had the gods themselves decided us unworthy to live? He was a pious person for sure, but even Maiyuhi could not claim to know the will of the gods or of the lesser great fathers, who lay just below the gods in hierarchy.   They walked up. "By the gods!" Yuka exclaimed. She saw ran to the left of the pile, and Maiyuhi saw Harry, shaking like a scared child at the sight. Maiyuhi knee that primal fear the day his grandparents died trying to contact the Ancient Ones, or Forefathers as they were known by the Yamachai. That was forbidden in all of the isles, and they had learned that the hard way, as now they were being punished. Yuka sat down alongside Harry and prayed to them, though Maiyuhi refused to read her lips out of respect. Something else caught his ear more.   "Yes!" He heard the voice of a woman. "Yes, come to us! Purify us!" She was wragged by madness, but somehow familiar to him even so.   He turned and tried to go further to the source of the noise, but Yuka stood in his way. "Out. Now." He said.   She turned to him. "Master. I can't allow your knowledge to be lost to whatever this is. It is the voice of Sei Shilu! Something must be dearly wrong!" Maiyuhi pushed her out of the way and drew his sword. They both came closer to the source of the commotion. In all his years of training, he had not seen anything like this.   "Shilu?!" He exclaimed as he saw an esteemed elder of the Order with fists glowing like hot fires. "Are you the cause of all this? How is this possible?" The barrier that kept magic away from this world was incredibly strong, but it wasn't infallible. He himself had spoken with his ancestors, and his old Sei, Tzuki, in brief phases during intense meditations. As the chosen children of the gods, the Yamachai could access some small degree of magic where the other races had none. But nothing the Yamachai could do of themselves was of this scale. Not nearly. And nothing this terrifying.   Shilu laughed. "This is it! They're coming! I have what they want!" At her feet was a rune-book, opened with ancient glyphs, even he had never seen before. It was an ancient one found deep in the ruins to the west, older than Olm or the earliest Yamachai stone settlements. It was of priceless value, and she had stolen it from their library! But something else was there. A small, glowing red shard. Of the Heartstone! It could be nothing else! "Their tongue has power in it! Their keystone is the key to our salvation!"   "What have you done!" He exclaimed and raised his sword to her neck, which was pumping at a rate that couldn't be natural. "You have blasphemed with this, and now you threaten our order? How could you?" He stepped closer.   Shilu ignored him. "Oh, great Saka. I see your glory!" Saka? Saka was one of the named Great Fathers in the old stories, the myths. A spirit of war and conquest, and vengeance. He turned up and saw a bright light brighter than the sun, but far more unstable, as if it were struggling to merely exist, fluctuating like a chick trying to hatch from an egg. He turned away before it could get too great for his eyes to bear. He could see the meteors were hitting harder and stronger to the ground, burning wood and tearing apart everything in sight. Centuries of progress, destroyed in an hour. Death had come. Shilu looked him in the eye now, her once golden eyes turning orange, then red. "He can only be here for a short time for the book. But he will come nonetheless. Receive him in all of his glory! For you shall not see him in his fullest!" He turned back to Yuka frantically, who could scarcely believe what was happening.   "I want you to leave here. Let others know what happened here, even if no-one else does." Her puzzled face grew with even greater confusion and fear now. He wished to hold her and tell her it would be better. But the Order values honesty beyond all else, especially the temporary emotion of comfort.   "Master! I can't leave you! Or anyone else here! I-"   "No!" Maiyuhi spoke more calmly now. "They are all dead. I can sense it. She and her master do not wish any survivors here. There is an opening in the fiery wall. Take yourself and Harry through it, and go north, away from the Isles of the Yamachai. What you find is there! Now go! And never look back" Now she went off. The last of the ancient runes had now been excavated from the ruins, and so there was nothing left of true value there besides artifacts to trade or put in a museum. More secrets laid in the lands of the The Phurzic Dominion. That is what his master had told him before his own death.   Now, Maiyuhi was on his own, with the traitor and the bright light above them. It was descending fast. She laughed again. "For years, our order has protected our people from each other, and from those human fools to the north. Against apostasy, and against heresy. But it wasn't enough. The Great Fathers have chosen me to be their first source taste of this world in millennia. And you as an example to all who defy them!" She laughed again, and fell into incoherent chanting. Avoiding every falling fireball, he saw the great tower of the Order buckle and collapse, like a gigantic candle. All he and the two thousand year old Order had built was set to die tonight. Rage overcame him.   He thrusted his blade into Shilu's neck mid-sentence, as she continued her prayers. He took it out to the side and her head only remained on through a thin strip of flesh. Even then, she continued to chant unintelligible phrases as he hacked her head into pieces, as rage grew and grew. Nothing else mattered.   He dropped his blade before he could bring himself to cut out her heart, but he scratched at her body, coating himself in her blood, as the light grew brightest. He screamed and cried out to all of the Predecessors, until all the air in his lungs was gone. He didn't need to lookup.   The golden figure towered over everyone else he had known, probably standing over five metres tall if he were standing up. He shone brighter than any sun in a gold of unimaginable beauty, with eyes like rubies-no, the Shard, staring at him through the glorious armour, with a helm shaped like a crowned scythebeast of Porpuda. He saw the face of death leaning over him, black spike in one three fingered hand, the other with the rune-book in it, and an elbow struggling against a gate of fire, seperating the world of mortality with his exile. Even in all of his power, Saka struggled to keep himself here in this world.   Saka...   "Saka." He muttered. Followed by a sneer, Then a giggle, then an ever more hysterical state of laughter as the flames enveloped around them. Soon, it was louder than the screaming before had been, and it continued. The absurdity of it all! This laughter continued even when the shadow blade was thrust into his heart, and for the shortest time afterwards too.