"I swear, each one was as big as my head. I almost wished for death, right then, right there."
     "You might well have, spending your whole sack on one fat whore."
     "Worth every coin! And when we march our way back, backs laden with gold, I'll take that fat whore as my wife!"
     Brok, marching on the outside, spoke over the laughter, "Aye, Jorn, and I wonder what Moll and your little boy would think of your Dinatosi whore? She seemed the motherly type."
Amid more laughter Jorn snapped back, "Brok the purehearted didn't even get an eye on her, couldn't even bring hisself to step inside the whorehouse."
     Jorn spoke facetiously about Brok, but Brok's attention had been pulled elsewhere. Of course, he had left his gold with Gran Cath and had no spare change for whoring, and otherwise, he had been filled with a sense of unease since before they entered the Dinatosi lands. For one thing, the figure leading them on horseback was a different hired knight, this one less grandly armored. He wore all brown leather and scale that looked like painted feathers weaved together, although the pattern was hard to see and seemed impossibly dark to look at as they marched in bright daylight.
     "Do you think that's Griffinscale*?" Brok asked Reg, who was marching beside him and much more engrossed in the boasting of Jorl and Jorl's mate, Tarn.
     "Eh?" Reg said, clearly not listening or ascribing any importance to the shift in leadership. In Dacian, the capital of Dinatos, after a series of meetings none of them were privy to, the hired knight disappeared and this scarred, ugly, sullen man had announced he would be leading them into the dark lands, and had spoken only twice each day, to signify the beginning and ending of their march. It must be Griffinscale he wore, and the visual illusion it produced only added to the growing pressure in Brok's gut. He bore a bow, though Brok knew little of any wood, having grown among fields and hills.  Brok had a feeling like this new hired knight was no knight at all.
    Brok, staring at the Griffinscale for several minutes, faltered a step.  He felt dizzy and decided not to inspect the man further. Reg finally turned his attention away from the other fieldmen marching in Red Sect livery and focused on Brok. "Are you right? You've been grumpy for days now, now you're nearly tripping over yourself." Reg held tight to the necklace he had purchased in Wexley, a long chain with charm he was told was pure silver from the high mountains of the Blighted Range, far to the north. Reg's eyes and fetish with the necklace told Brok he believed it was silver, that it had been mined by dwarves as he had been told it was, and though he proclaimed it was a gift for his wife, Brok thought Reg would never take it off his own neck if he could help it.
     "I'm fine, right as ever, only-"
     The horse leading them danced a couple steps forward before turning.  "We camp here for tonight."
      A murmur arose from the men, but one of excitement rather than worry. It was barely after high noon, and some still carried liquors from the last town they had passed. Brok wondered at the change in pace, but the group had all broken rank and began setting up their lean-to's in a small gully off the road. They made camp there, and drank by the fire. Brok watched the Griffinscale knight out of the corner of his eye most of the knight, wondering why the man kept himself so far apart from them. He wondered why not one figure passed them on the road the day previous. His unease was now a churning in his gut, the feeling of having filled one's belly with ale and milk at once.
     The next morning at first light, they broke camp and dragged themselves into the formation they had been instructed to hold. The Griffinscale knight mounted his horse, and turned to address them all. "Today, we enter the Black Hills." A moan arose from several of them, a weak cheer from several more. "Do not be deceived," he continued. "The land looks no different in most places. Eyes shall be watching us, however. Every step of the way, danger will be sniffing down our backs. Whatever you do, DO AS I SAY, and you may yet all live."
     No more cheers arose as he turned and ordered the march.


Two days later, they come upon the first village, or what used to be a place where people lived.  It looked surprisingly like their home village, three months march west into the open plains. The houses there had been torn down, not burned or scavenged in any way.  As he viewed the half-standing walls, shredded into grotesque shapes of claws and teeth, The turning in Brok's stomach became a full-fledged stinging pain, with bloody (he imagined) acid rising in his throat.
     "It's like...." Reggis was moved to speak, but received at least twenty hard stares that discouraged him from finishing the sentence.
      Like the roofs were torn off, Brok thought, so the inhabitants could be scooped up by...something.

Another two days later, with a rocky outcropping to their northern side and marshy flats overgrown with reeds, snakes, and insects, the band approached a lone figure in their path, the first living thing spotted in a week. Before them stood a black-robed and slightly hunched stranger. The Griffinscale knight called for a halt and rode forward, but stopped at least thirty feet away from the figure. Brok couldn't see the face of the person, couldn't tell if it was an old man, or and old woman, or a wolf standing there with a black coat over its head. He could barely make out the words the knight was calling out with, inviting the stranger to join the band in the name of the Red Sect, then he was boasting of the red sect. It seemed to be a diplomatic introduction, of sorts, but it also seemed lost on the stranger.
     The knight bristled. "Need you any assistance at all? Shall we simply pass by and leave you be?"
     Beside Brok, Reg was squirming and clutching at his chain with both hands. "I have a bad feeling, Brok. I've had a bad feeling for days."  Days? thinks Brok. "I know," he says.
     The stranger straightened upward a bit, but only a bit. Brok caught a hint of shine from beneath the cloak, as well as the outline of a nose. It was a woman. Hands also appeared at her side, raised up as if she were welcoming them all. No words came from the stranger. Then she snapped his hands over. The Griffinscale knight drew his sword and spurred the horse away just as the air around the spot where he had been became filled with a cyclonic, light-devouring energy, to all appearances the deepest purple Brok had ever seen, the stranger behind it weaving the same energy between her hands, her relaxed fingers tickling the humours as they danced before her darkly illuminated face, her black hood slipping away and revealing dangerous beauty that nearly froze Brok, not only seeing such amazing beauty but that she seemed in the height of ecstasy as she weaved the unbelievable, and finally the moment was broken as the energy between them all coalesced into a solid, giant canine form with eight sets of eyes staring out at them, man as dark as night, the troops itself simply stepping back, hardly one of them able to take a breath, no swords having been drawn, the Griffinscale knight dancing on his horse before them and screaming "Fight, you bastards! Draw your damned weapons!" before the monster skipped forward and swiped with one of its four front claws, taking the horse out and sending the knight skipping across the shale and glancing off a large boulder, before coming a rest, while all in the same moment half of the men drew their swords, still stepping backward, half of them turned and began to flee, Brok himself ducked to the side and watched the great night hound dance into their ranks, sending bodies, whole and halved, flying away from it, seeing Reggis standing only a foot away from the monster, sword in one hand, chain in the other, not backing away, and then Brok couldn't see him any more, but three of them were standing behind the beast and all turned to charge at the stranger, Brok jumping up and running along but forgetting to draw a weapon, getting halfway before the stranger herself reached out with impossibly long, kaleidoscopic purple arms, and she whipped each of the men from five paces away, each exploding into blue flame and falling away, and then Brok was standing before her unarmed, breathing hard, resisting the urge to vomit, behind him and to his left and right thirty men screamed in the throes of arcane agony, and before him two eyes burned bright with magic energy, Brok assuming he would combust from the inside at any moment, unable to move forward or backward, the growling and booming of the beast's stride echoing on the walls of the canyon until it stopped, and all was silent.
   Brok was alone with death and the stranger. She was smiling at him. He vomited, mostly on himself. When he looked again he saw the bright sheen of her eyes had faded and she before him once again became stooped, older and quite uglier, delicate hands fading to grizzled bony fingers, and moonlit complexion becoming bulbous, mole-flecked skin. The face disapeared beneath the cloak once again.
    "Why--" Brok choked on the words. She was turning from him. "Who are you?" he managed a firm demand. "You leave me alive for a reason, to go and tell them all. So tell me, who are you?"
    She paused, but only for a moment, and then was gone.
    Brok looked around. Fifteen or so bodies littered the ground, another fifteen stray body parts strewn about. He approached the middle of the field and found Reg's chain lying in the gravel. He found no sign of Reg's body, nor the Griffinscale-clad knight, nor about ten other individuals.

     They came from over the Sea of Mist, while no man in the Kingdoms believed there was land to be found across it. Their ships were behemoths gliding out from the darkest of realms. Birds cackled wildly and circled in mad indecision, bringing the people out of their huts and to the rooftops. There was no mistaking it. Dark Gods had arrived in their lands.
     There was little other information that survived to spread to the rest of the lands. Several kings wrought their hands till white-knuckled, yet whatever was taking over the eastern shores was doing so totally, and completely, once again laying a fog of war over everything. The merchant's knew well enough to leave, and so a great scarcity befell the closest kingdoms. After several years, the East,  was known simply as the Shadow Hills. [or shadow coast?]
     In the Dark Lands once stood the kingdom of Uulia, as well as a vast wasteland of dunes and oases to its north, and a lush forest marshland to the south, both under the protectorate mandate of Uulia. The kingdom itself had been ruled by gentle kings, who in secret had for centuries yielded power to the merchant guilds. These same guilds controlled ports and supply lines across the continent, south of the Sea of Mist, where island nations spread across the horizon like crumbs before the table of civilization. Uulia had been a land of diversity, tolerance, and beauty, a crossroads of the known Eastern world. This was all before the black mist fell upon the east.

      "Don't neglect the garden work, or the great shadow will arrive next fall, for sure!" Gran Cath croaked at him from her roost above the fields.
       "Sure," Brok called back, "and the ice trolls will come, too, right?" He could hear her snort, but was already on his way to the meeting. He had grown up hearing demonic fairy tales about the Shadow Hills, about trolls and giants of ice. Enough, he thought. No one even knew if the stories were real. Out there, on the great plains, his world had always been safe, out of the way of the wars of the kingdoms , too far from the mountains to hear of raids from Cragfolk. It was all too safe, if Brok had anything to say about it. Sure, the cabbages still needed weeding, and water needed to be brought from the stream, but Brok was sure he'd get to that after the meeting. He'd been looking forward to it for a whole moon.
       "Regg, you ox, let's go!" Brok called through the curtains of the darkened lean-to. A thin woman holding a baby came out. Reggis's wife Anis and little daughter Anistis. "Why are you always so loud, Brok?" Anistis was beggining to moan at a low and steady level.
      Brok danced around a bit out of boredom, practicing fencing steps he'd never actually learned or been taught. "I just have a lot of important stuff to say, nana, that's all!"
      Reggis emerged from beneath the curtains, dressed in curtains himself, more or less. He had a smile on his face that was almost as clear as the hunger.
      "Make me wait another moon or two, will you?" Brok reached for Reggis and attempted to rub the younger, taller man's head in his own armpit. "Call me an ox, will you? You big river-eel--" The two toussled and lurched, bumping into Anis and Anistis, who then began to screech at a higher and much more agitating level. Murmurs arose from the hovels above.
      "Would you two get on with your philandering? Leave us decent folk here for a peaceful sunset," pleaded Anis. Anistis continued emitting a very unsure sound.
    Under a blighted, yellow moon, twenty-odd men were gathered outside Dashers stablery. Brok had known most of those faces all of his life. They were all skinny, all except Dashers and his three sons, all present. A low clinking gait drew each gaze towards the sunset, where a man in greaves and plate, with a flowing white cloak behind him, carrying sword and dirk, made his way slowly through the crowd. He was taller than none of them, and yet each of the village men drew back, gave way before him as if he were a Knight of the (-------), yet they knew he was not, that he was a hired man from a merchants guild, and nothing else.
     "No women? Hmph." He slowed his pace, meeting each of their gazes, appraising them. The hired knight looked up and down, checked limb and posture, saw the girth of the Dashers and the stooped, darkened backs of the Gresh boys, who worked in the wheat fields. He looked right at Brok, but who know's what he saw there. Then he was at the head of them all.
     "Well, I wanted more, but this is good."  He paused for a moment and they all listened to the insects buzzing violently in the nearby groves. "Our mission is dangerous, but the Red Sect has no higher purpose than to assist those in the direst need." Several faces turned from astonishment to wistful smiles. These farm boys and field men didn't know the Red Sect from the Sun's Order or the Indigo, but they all knew a guilder was a guilder, and a guilder only cared about money.
      "Barbarians and monsters have invaded our lands, but good people still live in Uulia. They have no king, since the shadow took the great house of Hannais and the honorable King Jor."
      "No man here ever heard o' no King Jor, house Han-nay, or Uulia. We only know the Black Country." The oldest Dasher brother, barely a man himself, yet largest among them all, chortled and nearly choked. The hired knight only grew more grave.
      "You may not see just how important your actions could be to the future of the world," said the knight. He waved over the crowd, back the way he came, where the sound of wagon wheels could be heard. Two stewards drew on a kit heavy-laden, a fact they all saw easy enough. "Those who will march with me in the morning will leave behind a very real and tangible bag of gold for their loved ones. Or, bring it with you, to spend in the brothels of Wexley."
      A few laughs arose from the crowd. "Is it true there's a river of ale in Wexley?" A headless voice called out. More laughter arose.
       "You will see for yourself. You will see more than that. You will see the kingdoms of Ramenia and Dinatos in full before we even reach the lands of mystery and adventure." The knight's tone had changed from a serious one. He was trying to hide his disdain, and most of them did not see it. Brok saw it.
       "I heard the cities of Dinatos are full of giant statues of Gods and..." Reggis's eyes were wide and Brok could tell he did not catch the hint of derision in the knight's voice.
        Later, his head low among the cabbages and Gran Cath snoring heartily on her stoop above, his head filled with visions of giant statues, crystal towers and twenty headed monsters of black mist. His hand still felt the weight of the gold he had carried home, and his heart felt oddly heavy in the twilight.