Exile is a strange word. I have applied it to this period of my life for so long that it has become a name, the meaning but a memory. Who had exiled me? What king? What faith? What nation? I was the author of my exile, my shame keeping me from my home. Zhahllaia's plans for me had taken root in my heart and borne fruit. I could no longer separate one for the other. I wanted to be the man Zhahllaia saw in the future, and what occurred meant I could no longer be.

Even now, countless years from that awful day after the shipwreck of The Burning Knave, I find it difficult to write about. The pain recedes, but when I probe it, the agony flares afresh. This event has never been chronicled before, and in fact my early life has receded into legend and most historians would never even know this was thing to be recorded. Thus, even as it goes beyond the stated purpose of this volume, I shall attempt to transcribe it as accurately as I am able. Indeed, without it, it would be impossible to understand my exile at all, and as this is the time that gave me my Kharsoomian bride and initial noble title, it is vital to make sense of the period that followed.

I awoke upon a beach, alone. And I wish to emphasize the word alone. It was not a solitude I had heretofore experienced. No, I was alone. Not merely the absence of company, but the persistent absence, a void that would never be filled. I was utterly abandoned in a lightless place inside my own mind.

I lay on my belly, the sun baking me. I pushed myself up, my limbs weak, my body enervated. The beach was not like one I had ever seen. The sand I lay upon was black, and the water was bright, completely unlike what I had seen in the Lapis Ocean. A short walk up the shore was the edge of a jungle, though the trees looked strange. I saw no wreckage of The Burning Knave, and perhaps I should have wondered why there was none. Yet I was in no position to think. Not when my eyes fell upon my only company on that lonely beach.

Oddrin, my familiar, my sweet night eft, lay not far from me on the black sands. His little body was still. I ran to him, but it was too late. He was already cold, his glow long since guttered. I took his limp form from the sand and crushed it to my chest, weeping bitterly. My constant companion since before I had memory, and he was dead.

And with him, my magic.

I was no longer a wizard. All that I had been was gone. All of my plans were undone. I had nothing. I was nothing.

I do not know how long I wept. I know that by the time I stopped, my throat was raw and my tears would no longer come. I carried Oddrin up the beach and buried him in the soft soil at the jungle's edge. I knelt beside that little grave, mourning him until the sun grew low. Hunger and thirst compelled me to move.

I was dressed only in the breeches Jerrika had given me, a short length of rope keeping them up. Diotenah's ring still sat on my finger, and though I could feel her whispers in the faint tickle at the nape of my neck, they were distant, muddy. My only other possession was the silver goblet at my belt. I wondered, foolishly, if perhaps the cause of my present misfortune could be blamed on the fact that my xilquinal sapling, a gift from my elven love Tarasynora, was in the possession of my concubines back in Castellandria. I dismissed this thought, but during this first period of my exile, I returned to it more often, as the madness took on a shocking amount of sense.

I went to the water and filled the sweetwater goblet, drinking deeply. And then again, and again, my thirst powerful after the shipwreck. Were it not for that gift, I would have died. Once again, I thanked Thalalei in my mind. Our dalliance was so short, and yet this would be the second time I survived thanks only to her. This would not be the last time I was grateful for my erstwhile nereid paramour. When I was finished, I tied it once again to my belt. Were it not for that, I would have lost it along with the rest of my possessions, at the bottom of the Lapis.

My stomach was a queasy stone, and it was too late in the day to truly forage. I huddled at the base of a tree as night fell. As warm as the beach had been in the day, at night, the wind sweeping in from the ocean was bone-chilling. Strange sounds crept from the beach and echoed through the jungle. I barely slept that night, shivering helplessly in a ball until dawn mercifully broke.

In the morning, I unfolded aching limbs and took the time to explore my environs.

The trees here were bizarre. Formed of a gray-green leathery substance, they had neither bark nor leaves, but rather thick arms that often gave the faint and unsettling silhouette of a man. What I initially took to be a canopy of leaves was a netlike creature, whether plant or animal I could not tell, but it would travel from tree to tree with a soft and disturbing rattling noise. In places, where the trees grew thick and the animate canopies plentiful, it was as dark as any jungle.

The most common ground cover was a kind of bush, though it too had no leaves. It was formed of a tangle of soft vines, each one coated in a powdery substance that winds would fling into the air in great clouds. The colors were breathtaking. These bushes could be a bright blue or yellow, and even occasionally pink.

Things like flowers grew in haphazard beds. They were green tubes, with uncomfortably meaty tendrils that poked from the end to taste the air. Beds of soft moss grew by the plentiful pools and streams that honeycombed the land.

Flying things whirred through the air, their skin looking like that of the trees, their wings iridescent, a collection of tentacles hanging from their heads. Creatures something like scorpions scuttled over the trees, hunting gracile reptiles who glided from branch to branch.

My former companion, Velena Grimm, had grown up in the deep forests of Esmia. She had taught the Mythseekers some forestcraft, but this place was no forest. Still, I kept in mind the principles she taught us.

Oddrin's absence was an ache I could not truly comprehend. There were moments that I thought of joining him, of simply succumbing to despair. Yet something drove me. Perhaps it was mere instinct. I would keep moving because this was what I did. Or perhaps it was that confidence Zhahllaia put in my heart, this sense that would overcome because of the greatness she saw in me.

I found a shallow cave at the base of a cliff, the opening pointing parallel to the beach. This would form the base of my shelter and shield me from the frigid night winds. I went to the largest of the ponds, where the moss grew thick, and I gathered an armload. This would be my bedding.

That was quite nearly the end of me. With a great surge, a beast lunged from the water. Its head was huge and its glabrous body never fully emerged from the pond. It snapped jaws overflowing with hideous teeth. I threw myself backward out of terrified instinct, and I could feel the wind from the closing of its jaws. I scrambled backward as the beast hauled itself onto land, its agility sapped after its initial charge.

It was enormous, bigger than an auroch, with squat legs tipped with curved claws, slimy blue-green skin, and a fin running down its spine to its flat, paddle-like tail. Its beady eyes and nostrils were on the top of its wide head. The creature must sit just below the water, its eyes and nose above the line, waiting for prey. Prey that had been me.

I fled, and the thing charged after me, but only a short distance. It did not seem to like being away from the water for long. Soon it gave up, turning about and sliding back into the pond with disturbing grace, and it was like it was not in there at all. I was amazed that could hide, for the water appeared quite clear. The beast's blue-green flesh was the perfect camouflage, rendering it nearly invisible, only the telltale spots of its eyes and nostrils betraying its presence.

I returned to the pond cautiously and what I saw chilled me to the very bone. Eyes and nostrils barely poked from the still water. Everywhere. I could not find a single body of water, and that included the ocean itself, where these beasts did not lurk. I would soon find that every few days at dusk, they would haul themselves from their ponds and waddle down to the beach to spend their night in the ocean, and the following morning, they would return. I never understood the pattern of this, of which went to and fro or why. It was merely a fact of this strange place.

After the creature's attack, I returned to gather moss. I did it with more caution this time, always keeping an eye on the floating creatures. Whenever one started to drift my way, I would retreat from the edge of the pond.

When I had enough moss for a bed, I turned to fire. I had a momentary stab of shame when I could not simply call down lightning to catch a branch. I did not waste too much time pining for what could be. I was fortunate that I was able to find the proper stones, and after more time that I care to admit, got a blaze going. I started it with dried moss and fed it pieces of the bushes. The fire blazed green, and the scent was heady.

Hunger compelled me, but the sun was going down and the plodding crash of the frog-lions as they made their way out to sea kept me hidden behind my fire. I saw them as shadows, lumbering out in the dark beyond the flickering green of flame. I lay on a bed of moss, warmed by the fire. With my body's needs somewhat met, my mind wandered to loss. Oddrin, my hetairoi, the Mythseekers. Even my Zhahllaia and Sarakiel, far away beyond uncounted horizons. Loss was my true companion.

I slept only fitfully, my dreams vast and cruel. I awoke with the dawn, my fire burned down to embers. I set about finding food. The pond where my predator lived looked to be filled with fish, but every time I closed, the beast's attention turned to me, and it started a slow drift to my location.

I made my way up the cliff, where the drier terrain meant I would not be hunted by those things. Once again, I looked to Velena's training and constructed several deadfalls. It was far from easy, as this place lacked many of the raw materials she taught me to use. The fibrous tissue of the trees worked well enough, though it required much more work than a simple branch.

Proper stones, though, were plentiful. While I waited for the deadfalls to do their work, I crafted a primitive knife. At the time, I was in awe of my skill. Looking back, it was a rude thing, barely useful. I would grow far better at this toolmaking over my time in this strange place. My deadfalls would improve as well, as soon I learned that the creatures in this place had generally poor eyesight but preternaturally keen smell. Thus disguising the deadfall was less a matter of hiding it from eyes, but of masking it from scent. Dust from the bushes I found worked well.

That day I caught one of the small creatures that slunk through the undergrowth. I cooked it over a fire, and it was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. Starvation will do strange things to the appetite. Even now, these numberless centuries later, I sometimes find myself craving this simple taste.

I learned to live in this place. I discovered which plants I could eat and which made me violently ill. One attempt at eating the flowers resulted in me immobile, feeling as though my guts were being torn out of my body by rusty hooks. It nearly finished me, and only my foresight of gathering water and storing it in hollow branches of the trees saved my life.

The frustrating thing was that though I could craft blades in plenty, there was nothing that could serve as a haft of a spear. I was forced to make do with my stone knives and my deadfalls.

In the slow time of this solitude, I grew obsessed with the beast who lurked in the great pond. Though there were others of the frog-lions about, and many took their chance to attack, I thought only of the one who had attacked me on that first day, identifiable by its sheer size. I named him Old Heacharus, and often thought of how sweet the fish in that pond would taste were it not for their saturnine guardian.

Their preferred prey were squat, rugose creatures with thick foreclaws and heavy teeth that lumbered in from the jungle to drink from the ponds and streams. Many times I watched Old Heacharus and the other frog-lions ambush one of these beasts and drag them into the water, drowning them before swallowing the corpses in great, nauseating gulps.

Deep in the jungle, I could hear the sounds of something truly huge moving about, though I never saw it. This was enough to keep me in the wetlands.

Time was difficult to reckon out in this place. There was only the endless pass of days. My hair and beard grew long. My breeches turned to rags and fell from me, and I was nude, save for the fraying length of rope that wrapped around my middle and kept my precious sweetwater goblet safe. My body, already lean and hard, grew stronger, my reflexes sharpened by an existence as both predator and prey. As civilization fell away from my heart, I grew more potent.

I explored, never straying too deeply into the jungle. There were days I thought I could simply find a path home, and Zhahllaia and Sarakiel would learn to accept me as I was, crude and diminished. Far more often I thought it best to stay in this forgotten place and live out the rest of my now finite existence. I never went more than a half-day's travel up either beach or inland through the jungle. I suspected this was an island, but such a short sojourn did not show me a far border. Every night, I returned to my cave and coaxed another fire from my embers.

I named this point of land Storm's Rest, and perhaps I would have stayed were it not for the day Old Heacharus almost got his fondest wish. I circled his pond, gathering fresh moss as the stuff I'd been using had grown dry and would soon finish its lifespan as kindling.

The old bastard watched me, drifting ever closer to the shore in the hopes I would let my guard down for the single moment he would need to make a meal of me. He got his wish, in the most foolish way imaginable. I stepped without looking, as my attention was on him, and my foot slipped into a concealed hole. I fell, my ankle crying out in agony.

Old Heacharus took his chance when it was offered. He was out of the water in an instant, lumbering over the turf, his great, table-sized jaws open, the fleshy parts of his throat pulsating with the joy of prey.

I tried to rise, but my ankle gave out with a white-hot stab of pain. I collapsed as Old Heacharus lumbered over the broken turf. Frog-lions were disconcertingly fast over short distances, but rapidly slowed the farther they strayed from water. Normally, as long as he missed his initial lunge, I could easy evade him. Now, I couldn't run. I was reduced to frantic scrambling as the beast rushed me.

Imagine, the Dreadstorm, the hero of the Wooden Bay, the man who went into the city of Gurghann Urad and slew the necromancer Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter, he who cast the fell city of Vexacion into the abyss, would end his days as food for an overgrown newt. It was a near thing, nearer than I care to mention. I crawled over a fallen tree, and as Old Heacharus followed, I gave him a taste of my stone knife.

He tossed his great head, and my knife went clattering into the jungle. I had scored a hit, and that was all I needed. His jaw wept a strange, mucousy ichor. His momentary distraction allowed me to put some distance between us, but not enough. My body was perpetually on the verge of starvation and my muscles burned with the exertion. I did not have the reserves to force myself into such desperate action. My only defense, my knife, was gone.

My flailing hand found the trunk of a tree. I looked up at it. Madness. I could not run but I would try to climb? I could travel on three limbs, but not one. I hauled myself up the fibrous trunk as Old Heacharus readied another charge. The beast was farther from his pond than he liked, but he smelled food in the offing.

I climbed with a skill I didn't know I had. The tree, disturbingly soft, bowed beneath my weight, but it held. I hauled myself up to a crotch in the branches. Below, Old Heacharus made it to the trunk. He went up on his hind legs, the claws of his forelegs gripping the trunk. His jaw snapped, but I was out of his reach. Barely. I could feel his queerly cold breath on my feet. The odor wafted to me, like old pond water.

Above, the net of the canopy skittered from one tree to the next. Below, Old Heacharus stared up at me, his mouth open as though he would catch me upon my inevitable fall. I had no intention of coming down, but with me cornered, I believe the beast had gained confidence. He continued to watch me with the patience of death.

Over the next several hours, his skin dried. First the shine left it, then, as it tightened, it started to look like the map of this spit of land. The mottled blue-green camouflage darkened. Still, his throat pulled, the meaty pink of it trilling with avarice.

Finally, Old Heacharus pushed off from the tree, his bulk crashing to the jungle floor. He waddled a short distance to a pond. Not his old pond, but one so small that it could scarcely hold him. Scarcely was enough, and there he waited, the water revitalizing his tissues while he continued his carnivorous vigil from relative comfort.

As I watched Old Heacharus, despair began its seductive whisper. My hetairoi were dead, Oddrin was dead, I was no longer the man that could be what Zhahllaia wanted. Perhaps it was only right to end up as a meal for this beast. I could simply climb down and let him do what he wanted. Let him pull me into that pond and drown me. Not so bad as deaths went. Certainly better than tortured to death by Heacharids or sacrificed to a ghoulish god.

Something kept me in that tree. The spongy texture of the trunk dimpled under my clutch, grit from its fibrous skin sticking to my wet palms. I continued to wait, even as the sun went down. I hoped that Old Heacharus would choose tonight to waddle out into the ocean, but he didn't. He continued to watch me, patiently waiting for me to fall like an autumn leaf.

Night fell. I clung to that tree, shivering in the frigid air. Darkness swallowed Old Heacharus, but I knew he was there. I could feel the beast's attention on me like a weight. I spent that miserable night, exhausted, shivering, clutching that tree, knowing that the instant I tried to get down, Old Heacharus would make his final, fatal charge.

When the sky began to lighten, sure enough, there was the frog-lion waiting in the shallow water. Nearly invisible, I could see him by those inhuman eyes that ever blinked. It was the nostrils, though, that tracked me. He had my scent there, and it had destroyed whatever thought existed in his head. He would not be satisfied until he felt the end of my struggles.

I could not spend another night in the tree. Already, my throat was dry, and my body a mass of exhausted shivers. I tested my ankle. It would move, but only a bit, the flesh swollen. Running was still out of the question, and dropping from the tree would do little more than aggravate the injury.

Inland, the streams multiplied but thinned, disappearing into this strange jungle. If I could get deeper into the trees, Old Heacharus would run out of his water and have to turn back. I just needed a way to put enough distance between us to convince him I was not worth the effort.

The wind rose, and a cluster of the dustshrubs shed their coating of blue, pink, and yellow spores into the air in swirling clouds of color. I'd seen it many times, it was part of the strange beauty of this place. The scent was like spiced seawater. I watched a gust of blue run over the pond, and Old Heacharus huffed, tossing his head, then even following the gust for a moment. When it was past, he turned back to me.

Scent. That was it. Though his eyes were apparently fixed upon me, it was not the sight of me that kept him focused on his prey. It was my scent.

Below, on the far side of the tree but not far from the trunk, a fat yellow bush grew. It was well within the range of the beast's charge, but the uneven ground and the cover from the tree itself meant he wouldn't have a clear path. I would have a few extra heartbeats. And then I would wager upon this mad theory with my life.

The decision, life and death though it was, was an easy one. I could not stay and this was my only real hope.

I waited now for another gust of wind. Those few extra moments could mean the different between life and death. Or they could simply prolong my existence for those moments. The fact that I wanted those moments spoke to the ember of hope that still burned within me.

I do not know how long I wanted, but it felt like a lifetime. When the gust finally came I was not prepared. As a pinkish cloud washed over the pond and Old Heacharus turned, I hesitated. I could only hope that it wouldn't cost everything, for I could not wait for another.

I dropped from the tree. My leg, weakened by a night in the tree, gave. My injured ankle hit the ground, and white exploded behind my eyes. I heard a cry. It was my own.

Agony pounded at me, demanding I lay still, but I would not. Was it old ego, Belromanazar the Dreadstorm refusing to be brought low? Or was it Ashuz, the barbarian of Storm's Rest who demanded a more glorious death? I did not know. I know only that I crawled to the bush. Behind me, I heard the splash of Old Heacharus lunging from the water and the thud of his feet over the ground.

I dove into the soft confines of the bush, rolling in the tendrils, the yellow dust covering my body. Old Heacharus crested the small rise, and I went completely still. The beast huffed, then opened his jaws wide. I stared into the depths of his throat, the awful shuddering meaty things inside, vibrating with hunger.

I remained still, my entire body covered in yellow dust, my mind on fire. Old Heacharus swung his head this way and that, taking a few experimental steps along the ridge, trying to catch my scent.

Another gust of wind hit, and I watched in horror as the yellow dust was pulled from my skin and hurled into the air. I rolled into my belly, creeping over the dirt. Behind me, Old Heacharus sniffed the air. Ahead, a bush heavy with pink dust waited for me. My destination. I crawled for it.

I heard the clack of the beast's jaws, followed by his footsteps. Not fast, not a full charge, but the lean stalking gait the frog-lions used between charges, when they hunted the invisible pathways of scent, finding their path. I slinked under the bush and went still.

Old Heacharus sniffed, coming down to the yellow bush, its limbs now denuded. He sniffed it, then the air. With as little movement as I could manage, I rubbed the dust of the bush onto my body. The pink joined with the yellow, clinging to my sweat-soaked skin. I could only hope there would be enough to mask my scent. Then, I pulled myself through to the other side.

The beast followed. He paused, sniffing the air, then moved, unerringly in the proper direction though never moving faster than his slow lumbering gait. I went from bush to push, frantically putting more of the dust on my body as I left it behind in the dirt. Soon I had a trail of the shed dust, and Old Heacharus walked in it.

I was deep in the jungle before the creature finally gave one last snuffle and waddled back to the ponds. I was just peevish enough to hope he had wandered too far and would not manage to make it back, but I never would find out.

I finally lay back, breathing deeply. My thundering heart slowed. My limbs buzzed with fatigue. As my mind stopped spinning in terrified circles, I came to an awful realization. I would need to make my way through the wetlands to reach my cave. Past not only Old Heacharus but every one of his hungry friends. Always dangerous, it was impossible with my injured ankle.

I lay there, pondering my nonexistent options. Away from the habitat of the frog-lions, perhaps I could find a safe enough place to sleep. Or perhaps I would find whatever predators lurked in this place, or encounter whatever behemoth stalked the jungle. A single wooden branch would have solved everything. A spear, a walking stick, the one thing I needed and the one thing I didn't have.

I had gone from mourning the loss of my magic to wishing for a stick. This was how far I had fallen. I would have laughed had I remembered how.

Instead, I crawled.

The trees and bushes grew thick here, and soon I was smeared with a paste of sweat and spore. The light was dying and despair grew in me. My belly rumbled and my mouth was dry. My head pounded. I was little more than a mass of hurt and exhaustion.

What drove me to survive? I do not know. I fear I never will. Perhaps it was not one thing. The faces of my paramours danced through my mind's eye. Not merely Zhahllaia and Sarakiel, but Allegeth and Tarasynora and Mira. I saw Diotenah's silver teeth glittering in the dark, a smile to welcome me unto to death. I saw Einoë and Kallea as stormwights, the flesh I had covered with my kisses now mortified and dancing with lightning. I saw Phaeliope standing on the hills over Megannis, her chiton blowing in the wind, beckoning to me.

I was lost in these musings when I felt the presence. A purple scent filled the air along with the whisper of summer clouds. I tasted the laughter of an old friend my tongue. I had this sense before, in the presence of magic. This was far stronger than any I had ever experienced.

A shape approached through the trees. My senses struggled to make sense of it, each one giving me what the other should have. I saw it as shimmering silver, half again as tall as I, and an uncertain shape that suggested a human silhouette made of a thousand mirrored wings, all dancing at once. It stepped into the clearing.

Despite its alien appearance, I sensed no threat. Or perhaps Old Heacharus had managed to eat my fear. I stared at it, and it cocked what I would generously call its head and spoke.

The sound was a bass rumble and a high whine at either edge of hearing. The words danced with meaning, but it always flitted out of understanding. In my mind, I saw shapes spinning through the void, a pyramid colliding with a great cube, some kind of fruit I did not recognize rotting in the space of a single breath, and finally a spider-thing crawling through the darkness of a sunken village. I could not make sense of these images, but I felt as though the creature was trying to communicate, and more, that it somehow recognized me.

I shook my head, and reached for words to speak, but it had been too long, and I could find none. My native Rhandic caught in my throat. The creature knelt beside me, placing what was perhaps a hand on my chest. The shape flickered, pieces spreading, trilling, showing endless slices of being.

I put my hand over this place. The fluttering wings tickled my palm, filling me with the desire to move. The desire but no ability.

The shape flowed over me, forming a pillar between my legs. I felt its strange body over mine, the shimmering wings about my staff, the insistent hum like the first bloom of spring on my tongue. That is the only way I can make it understood, a taste that not only blossomed in my mouth, but over my body, inside my mind. My staff came to cautious hardness. In the long months since I had been in this place, this was the first time I had been aroused.

The shape shifted its position, and my staff was engulfed. I felt like the night sky was giving me the knight's kiss. Caressed by a soft traveler's wind, laved by starlight, and swallowed by the lonely hooting of an owl. It was a forlorn bliss that I could scarcely understand, let alone describe. I can only say that the bliss was upon me, a sudden roiling ready to spill, but at the same moment, my mind wandered a twisting road into the past.

Previously, my thoughts had fallen to my other paramours, and they returned there now. Perhaps the path had been worn, or perhaps because this creature above me had no face and I needed to provide it one. As my mind danced past each one of the women I had lain with, a feeling lingered upon the great shape above me. The shimmering mirrored wings began to solidify against one another as the creature took upon a more human shape.

A memory blazed in my mind, of the last I'd had, laying with Captain Jerrika Grendel in her cabin, her curly red hair a halo about her head, her eyes soft as I plunged into her again and again, a mischievous smirk on her lips. I think she healed me on our voyage. I had needed her in the aftermath of the war, sweet and skilled and uncomplicated, and she had been all of those things.

Then I was in the midst of the orgy on the eve of the Wooden Bay. I saw Meda's battle-hardened muscles and Ulodice's shaved head, Teidestra's vulnerable eyes and Eineira's eager sex. That night had been a last bit of revelry before destruction, the five of us giving our bodies to one another before committing them to the crucible of war. Teidestra was the one I thought of more than any of the others, the one I wished I could have had more time with. This longing, perhaps was one for Axichis itself, already lost.

Lysethe was next. I had broken and rebuilt her on the altar of sex. I could not know then whether she would remain my creature, but I had never been with anyone who gave me as much power. Her lithe, powdery flesh writhed over me, her red eyes carrying only need. She was a slave, but one made willingly.

Hatred took me as I imagined I impaled the Heacharid Theophilia Bardane. Perhaps the most dangerous woman I'd ever taken, one would never know from looking at her tiny and exquisite form. I saw her shape surrendering to pleasure. I hated her, but I think in her way, she loved me.

She was gone, replaced by the sellsword Talynore Tazo. The freeblade's body was sculpted by a lifetime of war and her loveplay made use of her physical skills. We had not loved each other, but we had found comfort in each other's arms. There was something pure about our time on that island together. She was me, shorn of my foolish pride and purpose, and in that, I respected her.

The soft body of Dromesia writhed over me. It has been loss that united us, the one and only time we lay together. Grief from Phaeliope and the fear of the wound that had nearly slain me drove me to her, and the death of her family had brought her to mine. She had healed me, or she had at least given me leave to once again walk upon the road of war.

I felt Phaeliope's statuesque body under my touch, her golden eyes upon me, her incredible body control as she sunk deliriously over me. I had loved her too much. This was the moment the war had started to break me. I had not seen it then, but with the creature taking me inside of her, I saw it with the purest clarity.

Suddenly, what was Phaeliope's sex turned into the mouths of my hetairoi, Einoë and Kallea. On either side of my staff, their tongues laved me as they kissed with me between them. The three of us had been an unbreakable unit. The Heacharids could never slay them. It had taken me. Yet in that moment, I did not hear their pleas to kill them. I only heard the sweet sighs that came from them as we lay together.

The curves of Sarakiel were with me now, her sweet round body covered in her stripes, her long, tri-colored hair wantonly about her shoulders. I loved my darkling. I wished I could touch her cheek, and her indigo eyes would open and at that moment, the two of us would find our bliss within the same heartbeat. I knew then that I had to see her again, had to be with her. I would not die in this far-off place.

As though to show this foolishness, Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter came to me. Her ring still sat upon the index finger of my left hand, and now it burned with cold fire. With Oddrin dead and my magic gone, I thought it must be useless, but in her black eyes I saw the same passion that lingered in my mind. She moved, her slender body shifting until she lowered her hairless sex over my mouth.

As my tongue began to explore the strange creature's body, I found now that the shimmering mirrored wings had settled against one another, as though she were a creature of endless, folded planes. And in the fullness of her, she had taken on more human form. The wings fluttered in places, breaking her outline, but then it was together again. As I worked into her sex, I saw her shifting. In places, I could see through her, and then she was blocked again, soft flesh in place of the mirror. Orange light spilled from her slit, bathing me in the warmth of a campfire.

I felt Bridda now. As I explored her bounteous curves, I felt her lay flat atop me, that starry feeling engulfing my staff once again. I had loved Bridda before I knew what love was, and my night with her was one I treasured. I had once asked her of the world where the hedge wizard married the baker's daughter -- the baker, she would have corrected me -- and we would be happy in our small life. Our lives had missed one another, but in that, our one night was all the more precious.

Itylara, Tarasynora's lover, was next. I did not have much to hold from her. I felt Tara with us, but it was not yet her turn, not yet her memory. Itylara and I had lain together because that was what Tara wished. We danced to her tune, and though the time had been lovely, something about it felt wrong.

But now I thought only of the muscular green thews of Ghorza the Hammer. The orc who had abducted Tara and held her in bondage had been one of my great victories in the arts of love. She had treated our coupling as a battle and I had to use all of my tricks to prevail. Prevail I had, and I had sent her to unconsciousness with shattering bliss.

She was gone, and I was with the women of Comfort House. Zemfira, Vadoma, little Mei, the skilled Yelan, and sweet Isellynor. I thought of the half-elf more than any of the others. She had given me my fantasy, and I thought to lay with her again, but she vanished. Something had happened, and she had been disturbed or offended, but my memory danced around it. What had I said?

Allegeth was with me next, her scales radiating an inner heat. I tasted her cinnamon milk on my tongue, and I longed for her. We had only been together a few times, and I wanted her perhaps more than any other. No, I needed her. She was one of my loves, and I would find her. I would declare myself. I had to leave this place and find my way to her.

Velena's tongue lapped at me, Xeiliope's strong hands clutched me, Alia's tiny body sank over me. My Mythseekers, my closest companions, who I had lain with more than any others, in every combination. The warmth of our friendship and the coldness of our parting warred in my mind. I wished I could speak with them, explain myself. Have them understand and love me as their boon companion once again.

Thalelei made a sound outside of my hearing as she found her bliss at the end of my tongue. The nereid, who had come from the sea and convinced me that Burley Shoal and Thunderhead was too small for me. We had been together for such a short while, but she was the only reason I still lived.

Tarasynora sighed as I penetrated her. She was at once supplicant and dominant. I always felt as though I was doing what she wanted, even when I took her brutally, leaving handprints on her lavender buttocks. I loved her, but I was wary of that love. I needed to understand it, to know what this truly meant.

My Zhahllaia settled over me, the trilling of her ineffable touch coaxing gooseflesh from my body. Her gold-flecked eyes held mine, her chains clinking softly as she rolled her hips over mine. Her hand was busy between her legs where we met, and it was not her sex that I felt but my own hand. I loved her more than I could bear. I wanted to be worthy of her loyalty, and in that moment, I would be.

Black Mira Sauret took me now. She had ushered me into this world, not tenderly, but with care. I thought of her with nothing but affection and gratitude. I wondered what she would think of me if she saw me again. If she had heard of my time in the war, or as part of the Mythseekers. Did she think of me? Hold a place in her heart for that night?

The creature was now solid. I felt flesh over me, tasted it on my tongue. Her hairless sex was a swirl of color. I felt a mouth over my staff, the sucking tearing the bliss from me. I felt her shudder, and then a wash of nectar flowed into my mouth. It was sweet, like the juice of a hundred different fruits. I swallowed, and felt the pains in my head vanish, the void in my stomach fill, the fatigue in my bones vanish. In that moment, I could have killed Old Heacharus with my bare hands.

After a scant moment, the creature stood. I could finally see what the creature I had lain with had become. She was half again as tall as I was, and with the lean and muscled body of a traveler. Her flesh was a swirling mass of color, glowing softly in spots along her neck, her thighs, and over her heart. The strongest glow came from her sex, where the hairless slit spilled an enchanting orange light. Her face had the quality of a statue, a classical quality to her smooth skin. Her lips were full, her chin stubborn, her eyes wide. Those eyes were smooth orbs, a deep velvet blue sparkling with starlight. Her hair was long, and braided, looking like a flowing river going down her head. She was glorious, a goddess before me.

She touched her lips, where a bit of my seed had fallen, and licked it from her finger. A faint frown creased her ageless features and then vanished.

"Who are you?" I asked. My voice was rusty. Rhandic would not come from my mouth, but Abbih, the language of Old Qammuz, would.

Her expression brightened. "Thy words...the nomads' tongue."

"Nomads? This is the language of Old Qammuz." My Abbih took the form of the way it was spoken in the courts of the sultan, yet her Abbih was somehow more archaic. Rather than feeling formal, it had the sense of being at once fanciful and rough.

"The tribe appeareth in the deserts near the city of Kharsoom."

"City of Kharsoom? Kharsoom is no city but a collection of kingdoms, free cities, and petty empires."

"I know not the name of thy kingdom. The Fifth holdeth mysteries in plenty. Acceptest thou my gratitude for the shape. It pleaseth me. It spreaketh unto me of the Fourth."

"The Fourth? I don't understand."

She turned and walked a few steps into the jungle, then she turned about. "Walk with me, Thürling."

"I can't--" I started to say, even as I rose. I do not know why I reacted, but her words had power. I put weight on my hurt ankle, and felt nothing. In fact, I had never felt better. The world was small and light. I reached out, and without any words exchanged between us, the giantess took my hand and led me into the jungle.

It was a strange feeling, having already lain with her. And yet, it did not feel as though we had. Already, the memories were blurring, and in each one, I was with a different one of my paramours in that clearing. I do not know why, but I kept returning to Velena and Dromesia. I don't know why their pillowy curves were the ones that caressed my mind but they lingered.

As we walked, the night grew darker and the trees thicker, but she unerringly found the path through, wide enough for a creature such as she.

"Why did you call me the Fifth?"

"Knowest thou not of the history of Thür?" she asked.

"The history of Old Qammuz," I started, and fumbled, as I had the distinct impression that referring to Qammuz by its usual appellation was foolish in the face of this divine creature.

She stopped along the path and turned to me. The light from her sex lit my body and I found myself growing hard unbidden. Her eyes, shining like the night sky, stared into mine. She pressed me down onto the jungle floor and I found that now we were on a bed of soft moss, and she straddled me, guiding my staff into her. This time, my mind did not drift to others, I experienced the synesthetic dance of her sex. She pumped her hips over me, and leaned down.

"Dost thou feelest it, Thürling?" she asked.

"Yes," I gasped, the bliss already upon me.

She reached down, gently opening my mouth with a pair of massive fingers, then leaned over and opened her lips. A thick stream of liquid, like a waterfall, came forth. It shimmered like a rainbow, dancing with stars. It flowed from her mouth into mine in an endless stream. I found myself swallowing unbidden, choking. She touched my throat, and it simply opened, the juice now flowing easily from her and into me.

My body went rigid. The liquid ignited my insides. I was not a man but a constellation of stars, each point in my body blazing. Indescribable bliss gripped me, my staff instantly pumping gouts of hot seed into her, completing the flow of the river between us. I was shining now, pushed beyond the limits of sensation. I was one with this divine being. I sensed she was getting something from me as much as I from her, as though my seed connected her with this plane of existence. A bonding rite that rendered her knowable.

As the pleasure, the sudden knowing, become unbearable, engulfing me in an impossible blaze of white, I opened my eyes. I stood next to her on a rainbow road. Below me, I saw my own face, my wild, unkempt hair and heard, my eyes glowing like twin stars, the path leading into my open mouth. Above, the path led between her lips. These two were colossal, and yet, we stood together on the path between us.

"May I know your name?" I asked in the polite Qammuzi greeting.

"Some amongst you called me Ksenaëe. I be but a simple wanderer. As art thee."

There was nothing simple about her, but I let it stand. If she saw kinship between the two of us, I would not gainsay her. Such was, at its base, flattering.

We walked along the path. As we approached, he perspective of her colossal face changed. I saw that she was not her, but a collection of celestial objects, and the closer we came, the more her face became abstract, then vanished into the haze of color and grandeur. She was sublime.

Ksenaëe and I walked amongst the stars, dyed with a wash of purple and pink. Before us, a globe spun gently in the dark. Each stride took us closer, the globe growing. Then we were over it, running quickly over the light. Below, I saw a watery place, dotted with jungles and wetlands like the one I was presently in. The strange trees, the bushes and their bright spores, and wildlife I knew from the frog-lions to the flying tentacled things.

In the oceans, colossal shadows swam beneath the waves. One surfaced, and I recognized its hideous lines. Mu-Baoth crested the waves and then vanished underneath. But then another, and another surfaced. A whole race of these leviathans filled an ocean I did not recognize.

Then, on a black sand beach, I saw a shape, nearly human, pull itself from the water and stride to the shore, where a village of bone and coral waited. I longed to be close, to make out more of this strange creature.

"Thine eyes be opened," Ksenaëe said.

A wash of chaos, a world of flood and storm. The great beasts, the Mu-Baoths, rampaged and sank the islands into the sea.

And then, rock covered the world, pushed up from within to surface it. Like a fruit growing a peel, it covered the world in desert and badland and waste. The creatures prowling this land were great brutes with long, curved teeth and jagged horns.

A village of orcs lived in a valley, farming hardy crops and hunting the lumbering beasts. I watched a fire grow on the horizon and an army clad in black iron. Dragons, barely the size of horses, found both with and against the orcs. We were gone then, the world breaking open and another peel engulfing it.

We strode along the rainbow as the world once again reshaped itself. This time I recognized what emerged. It looked like the steaming jungle of Ul Adrax, where I had found the lizard-bird figurine. Fidget, as Sarakiel called her, now far away in Castellandria. I saw great cities of stone, prairies filled with giants, and seas alive with creatures. It was an era of vibrant and ostentatious life.

In the corners of the world, in the tiny frigid confines of the far south, I saw a tribe of elves. They were dressed in furs, their tools little more than stones. I watched them gather in the highlands and sweep down upon the jungles in greater and greater numbers.

The world broke again. Glaciers grew in the north and south. Jungle turned to forest, plain to tundra. Elvish cities, like Iarveiros, spread all over the world. Dragons ruled the mountaintops and the deep forests and the great fens. Burning beasts freed themselves from the earth to slaughter the elves and I caught another sight: orcs. Gone for an age but now returned, they joined with these beasts and culled the elves with the help of something else I saw for the first time: humans.

Only a scant few, but they were among those pillaging the elven cities. Nomadic tribes, allied with orcs, treated as fodder in the hordes. Before I could see more, the world folded over on itself again, and I saw a place I recognized. Obai, which I knew from the maps, bloomed with cities, first in Kharsoom and then a place I recognized could only be Old Qammuz. I wondered if Zhahllaia were in there, if she could sense my presence.

Humanity spread. I watched nomads leave Obai, find Aucor, settle, then a new wave of nomads go north to Chassudor. I saw the coastline where I grew up, bare for a millennium, then dotted with our tiny, hardy settlements.

And then I saw something I recognized. A burning at the edge of understanding, a readiness for the world to once again renew itself. A growing rind longing to engulf what we had and reshape Thür anew.

"The Fifth," I said, understanding dawning upon me.

"Thür hath her Strata, each unique and beautiful," Ksenaëe intoned.

"How am I here, in the First?"

We raced over the rainbow path, finding a place where the earth had been eaten away, forming something of a valley. It cut through the Strata, revealing the jungle in which I stood. "Thür hath her Hollows, where the old persisteth," she said.

The rainbow pathway led down into this hollow, and I was above us now, watching this giantess writhe over me, continuing to empty her nectar into my mouth, me beneath, continuing to pump my seed into her. I ran along the path, faster and faster, and now I was between us. A step, and I entered my own mouth.

I opened my eyes, uttering an ecstatic moan as my staff pumped one final time into her. She closed her mouth, the waterfall terminating. I drank the last few drops of the liquid, and when the last drop fell past my lips, I fell into a deep and rejuvenating slumber.

When I awoke, Ksenaëe was gone. I was tempted to think our encounter had all been a wonderful dream, but I knew it hadn't by the strength in my limbs. All of my hurts were gone, with only my old scars persisting. My belly was pleasantly full for the first time since the shipwreck, my mind and body rested. I stood on the path looking this way and that.

I could follow it back to the shore, but if I did that, I would never find this pathway again. I would be returning, surrendering to my exile in these wetlands and I would surely end my life in the belly of one of the frog-lions.

The other direction went into the jungle. I knew I would not encounter Ksenaëe again. No, she had given me all she would. This was the way out of the Hollow. A way to my home, and a road to further adventure. The knowledge she had given me was but a taste. I knew there to be more. I stood, weighing each option against my heart.

Perhaps I had lost my magic, but I had not lost my mind. I set down the pathway into the jungle to my destiny. I would not return home, but I could explore this world.