Paragon of Destruction

Snowcloud sighed as she looked at the corpses. "They were members of the Waning Moon faction, probably sent to keep an eye on the area around the Soaring Sun camp. That they saw us and recognized me was just bad luck."

Arran gave her a questioning look. "How do you know they weren't sent after you?"

"Because the Waning Moon wouldn't be foolish enough to send weaklings like these after me," she replied. She pointed at the charred body of the young man, then continued, "And that was Saman Tir, a member of the Tir family's younger generation. His father would never send him to confront me — not without five times the backup, at least."

"One of Amaya's cousins?" Arran asked. He still remembered that the Tir family was the main force behind the Waning Moon faction, and that Amaya was one of the family's scions.

"A distant cousin," Amaya confirmed. "I imagine the Tir family won't be happy about this, and his father even less so."

Arran frowned, worried at the thought of making a group of powerful new enemies. "Then why did we kill him?"

"They would have taken us to the Waning Moon camp," Snowcloud replied. "If anyone there was involved in Grandfather's poisoning, or if they suspected I had chosen to cast my lot with the Soaring Sun faction, they would have killed us."

"But what about this?" Arran gestured at the bodies littering the grass. "When they find out, won't they come after us?"

Snowcloud shook her head, showing no signs of worry. "It will take them weeks just to discover that these four are dead, and when they do, they'll assume the Soaring Sun faction is responsible."

"Alright," Arran said, somewhat relieved. "Then let's get their belongings, burn the corpses, and move on."

They began to gather the novices' belongings, but after only a moment, Snowcloud cursed loudly. When Arran looked at her, he saw that her expression had suddenly turned anxious.

"We have a problem," she said, holding up what looked to be a golden amulet. "Saman was carrying a Lifesense Amulet."

"What does it do, exactly?" Arran asked. A feeling of foreboding weighing down on him, he added, "And how much trouble are we in?"

Snowcloud hesitated in answering, her brow furrowed as she thought. "This amulet is part of a pair," she finally said. "The moment he died, the person who owns its twin knew about it. And that would be his father, Ardesh Tir — one of the Elders of the Sixth Valley."

For a moment, Arran closed his eyes, cursing under his breath. "I suppose it gets worse?" he said finally, suppressing a sigh.

Snowcloud nodded slowly. "The owner of the other amulet can sense where this one is. At a large distance, it will only give a rough direction, but the smaller the distance, the more accurate it becomes."

"Is there a way to block it?"

"Putting it in a void bag will block it," Snowcloud said. "But he already has the direction."

At once, Arran snatched the amulet from Snowcloud's hands and threw it into the square-jawed man's void bag. He quickly added the other void bags as well, and then, without hesitating, he began to stuff the corpses into it.

"We're not burning them?" Snowcloud raised an eyebrow as she saw what Arran was doing.

"The less evidence we leave, the better." Arran frowned. "How long will it take the Elder to get here from the Waning Moon camp?"

"A week, at most," Snowcloud said. "He'll travel much faster than we can."

"No problem." A decisive look had appeared in Arran's eyes. "If all he has is a rough direction, it will be nearly impossible for him to find this exact location. And even if he does, we'll be long gone."

"What about that?" Snowcloud pointed at the void bag in Arran's hands. "Will we leave it here?"

"No," Arran said, shaking his head. "We're traveling to the Eidaran Empire, right? We'll dump it there, in some place where it won't be found for the next few centuries."

"But if we carry it with us…" Snowcloud glanced uncomfortably at the void bag that held the terrible danger.

"If someone finds out what's inside, we're screwed," Arran agreed. "But if other people are searching our void bags, we're probably dead already. The best thing to do now is erase all traces of the fight, and then leave as quickly as we can."

He knew that leaving the void bag behind wasn't an option. If the Waning Moon Elder somehow found it, the man would immediately know that his son hadn't been killed by Soaring Sun novices, who would surely have taken all their loot back to the castle.

Taking the bag along was a risk, but Arran saw no other option. He would dispose of it the moment he discovered a place where it would not easily be found, but no sooner than that.

Snowcloud looked doubtful, but after some more convincing on Arran's part, she finally agreed, albeit reluctantly.

Before they left, they spent the better part of an hour cleaning up the scene of the fight, taking care to remove anything that suggested there had been a battle. By the time they finished, the area looked as if they had never even passed through.

Of course, an Elder might still be able to find things they had overlooked, but not without searching carefully. And since the Elder whose son they killed had only a rough direction to go by, he would have to search dozens if not hundreds of miles.

Whether he found the scene of the battle or not, the search would take him weeks. And by then, Arran hoped, he and Snowcloud would be over a thousand miles away.

They finally left as hurriedly as they could while still concealing their tracks, anxious to be far away from the battleground — and the Elder they knew was coming their way.

In the weeks that followed they traveled every moment they could, barely taking the time to sleep, and even then only when they were overcome with exhaustion.

Arran had it easier than Snowcloud. Although she was the stronger mage, Arran's body was now substantially stronger than hers, and while the lack of sleep still left him exhausted, the travel itself was easy — even if they spent most of their days and nights running.

Yet while Arran's body held up well, the real burden was a mental one. With every step he took, he felt as if the void bag with the corpses was weighing down on his shoulders. Every sound he heard left him startled, and there wasn't a single moment where he let his guard down.

If the Elder had somehow found a way to track them, every moment could be his last one, and there was nothing he could do about it. Not yet, at least.

After nearly a month of wretched travel, they began to encounter the abandoned ruins of towns and villages. At first, the ruins were rare, but as they continued onward, the sight of broken buildings became increasingly common.

But although they saw many buildings, the area seemed completely devoid of human habitation, and in hundreds of miles of travel, they did not encounter a single person.

This, Arran understood, was what remained of the Eidaran Empire — an endless landscape of wreckage and ruins, with the population completely swept away by whatever it was that had caused the empire to collapse.

At any other time, the sight would have disturbed him. Now, however, his mind was focused only on the powerful mage who might be following them. Once more, he felt a strong urge to rid himself of the void bag that held the corpses and the amulet as soon as possible.

They traveled inside the old borders of the Eidaran Empire for several weeks, passing through ever-larger abandoned towns, with the many roads and empty farms suggesting that the region had once been densely populated.

Then, finally, they came upon a city. The sight of it left Arran speechless — the city was far larger than any he had ever seen before, and even in its current state, it filled him with awe.

Yet for all its glory, even from a mile away Arran could see the city was thoroughly ruined, with large parts of it turned to rubble, the once-grand city walls now mostly collapsed, and no sign whatsoever of the people who had once inhabited it.

"Let's take a look," Snowcloud said. From her voice, Arran could tell that she felt the same sense of awe as he did.

"All right," he said quietly, still staring at the city. As he looked, he could not help but feel dread at the thought of such a majestic city falling. Whatever had happened here, it must have been a catastrophe that exceeded anything he could imagine.