Not long ago, as I write this, I had the occasion to see a tapestry depicting my time as Tyrant of Zuunkhorun. Woven after my time upon that jeweled throne, but now millennia in the past. The colors had faded, the edges frayed, but the memories it sparked shone brightly.

In it, I stood out behind the Deadwall, lightning about my head, my crown a halo. A serpent, her feathers vibrant, wrapped about me in an embrace both possessive and predatory. Look closely at my left hand and see the glint of silver about my finger. But it was what I clutched in my right that I speak of now. A spear, styled here as a bolt of lightning thrown from the heavens as my left hand reached to the enemy. It was the pose I had come to be known for, "Come to me," it said, "come to me and perish."

A few of my brides had found their way upon the weave as well. Tanyth of course was by my side in a place of honor, for the people of Zuunkhorun were enthralled by her. Some called her goddess and others whore, her beauty entranced them, as did her habit of keeping with the Kharsoomian custom of nudity. Here, she wore a diaphanous half-gown, her breasts bared, the Constellation of Iarveiros hanging from her neck. They would have called her Crimson Tanyth or Tanyth the Fair.

Sarakiel stood behind, shrouded in her robes, sinister in mien. She often receives this treatment, as a darkling she was ascribed motives that she would never consider. She was known as Sarakiel the Wise, or just as often, Sarakiel the Secret.

Lysethe, now styled the Hound of Heaven, swept ahead in her red enameled armor, commanding a legion of wights while spearing the enemy with bolts of heavenfire. They would have known her well, for those who raised my particular ire would be hunted by the Pale Hound. Her long silver-white hair was a halo, her red eyes filled with the savagery of battle. Her collar was hidden beneath her gorget, but I knew it to be there.

Before her, the shape of Ten Ghosts, astride her monstrous mount, swinging her great studded war club. If they feared the Hound, they feared my Huntress even more. She is terrible in her wrath, and sadly more known for it than her poetry.

But I am distracted, as is so often the case, by the incomparable women who share my bed. I speak of the tapestry for the spear. I am so strongly associated with this weapon that it is strange sometimes to think of my life before I wielded it. Sometimes I imagine battles from the Fall of Axichis with it in my hand. It joins the many poisoned musings, all bearing the same question. Could the war for Axichis been won? Of course, the answer is no, but I carried it through my next war, and I won that one. If nothing else, I could have struck down more Heacharids with that weapon in hand.

Most historians know only that I emerged from the wastes of Kharsoom bearing this spear. In the Zuunkhorunia, the historian Orbei claims I took it from the tomb of the tomb of Barkab the Butcher, where I found it clutched in the old monster's withered claw. In The Dance of Shadows, Palireen says it was a gift from the Clan Abibaal, when I became their prince. And in The Dirge of the Ageless, Tylcaiah Holaxina believes I forged it from a great lightning strike manifesting from my rage at the elves' betrayal.

They are all wrong. This is the true tale of the origin of my weapon. This is the tale of Fate, Ur-Anu the Blackspear.

Of all these versions of the truth, Orbei has it closest, and I believe this is because her great-grandfather Tagadhur served ably as my Master of Birds. I appreciate Orbei's history, as though it can be less than generous in places, on the whole I think her fair. Merely, in this case, wrong.

As the story begins, I walked the path Ksenaëe had marked for me for days and nights. I felt neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue. I believe the nectar I drank from her lips sustained me in this time, and I would soon put it to good use in another manner. She had given me what I needed as a traveler, for this I believe was her sacred purpose.

The terrain changed, the jungle growing dense and joined by slithering brambles. A viscous slime hunted through the canopy, its movement betraying sinister intelligence. Herds of the plant-eaters trekked through the undergrowth, eating the dustbushes and shoots that now sprouted at the base of each tree. They scarcely reacted to my presence. I did not look like a predator, hence I was nothing to fear.

At night, the tentacled flying things roosted in the treetops in clusters so thick the trees themselves sagged. I passed strange, seed-shaped objects twice the size of me, a cleft in front that looked uncomfortably inviting.

Once, I glimpsed the behemoth I had heard so many times. A sinuous creature, it stalked through the trees on relatively short legs, its body like a vast river. It bore some resemblance to the tentacled flying things, its skin rugose, with a collection of tentacles writhing about its face. It was hideous and beautiful in its way and I was compelled to name the beast oorn, due to its mournful cry that echoed over the alien jungle.

Some days into my travel, with the sun shining high overhead, I heard something I did not expect.

Voices.

I did not recognize the language, though to my untrained ear, it sounded perhaps Orcish. Please understand that at the time, I believed there to be a language called Orcish, spoken by every extant orc upon Thür. In fact, I was not hearing any language ever spoken by an orc, as I shortly found.

I scurried off the path, hid myself behind one of the great seed pods, and peered out to see the source of the voices.

I was additionally surprised when I saw what was strolling up the path. Goblins, two of them. The diminutive race, about half the size of a man, were a common hazard in the deep places of the world. They are almost unknown above ground, sometimes troubling towns near their lairs and then only at night. Sunlight renders their large eyes blind and even torchlight can dazzle them.

The goblins that came up the path looked far more like orcs in miniature, with eyes more in proportion to their skulls. Their skin was greener than I was used to, a bright olive close to the shade of the trunks of the local trees.

Forgive me, for such studies are Allegeth's domain, but it is my understanding that orcs descend from goblins, come to the surface in the distant past and grown hale and strong. After what Ksenaëe showed me, I believe this was during a previous Strata of the world, perhaps even the First. Hobgoblins, so Allegeth claims, descend from goblins that came to the surface in the far more recent past. What is known for certain is that the three races are cousins and can be quite dangerous.

These goblins wore leather kilts, helmets, and breastplates, with coin-sized iron plates sewn over regular intervals. Both carried short spears with iron tips, and shields of stretched hides over wooded frames. These arms and armor were far more uniform and finely-crafted than the usual cast-offs they made use of.

They spoke casually in their language as they made their way along the path. Though goblins were half my size, I held no illusions what the two of them could do to me. Had I a weapon or my magic, they would not have presented even the slightest obstacle. In my present humbled state, they were enough to keep me cowering behind the pod, watching them as they disappeared up the path.

The way they strolled so casually, I estimated they could not be far from their home. I waited until they were out of sight, and I began to move cautiously, making my way through the undergrowth, paralleling the path along which they had come. Ahead, through the trees, the terrain rose in a pair of low, rocky hills.

Soon, more voices rose on the air, speaking the language of the goblins. I had previously thought of their language as harsh, but not then. That day in the strange jungle, it sounded to me almost welcoming, the bright village chatter that could be heard in every corner of the world. Yet I remained cautious. Perhaps it was prejudice against goblins or perhaps it was that I had recently spent over two years being wary of armored individuals with spears. Still, I approached, and found that the jungle ended ahead, an open area beyond. When I broke cover, what I saw took my breath away.

What I thought were two separate peaks had once been a single one, blasted in half by an impossible force. What had been the apex was now a furrow carved into the jungle floor. A pathway surrounded it on all sides, a tiny buffer between jungle and canyon. Stone staircases went from the valley's floor to the rim, where the pathway first circled, then struck out to penetrate the jungle. But this wasn't what awed me.

The skeleton of a great beast wallowed in the furrow. The skeleton of this beast was so impossibly huge that it was not initially recognizable as a skeleton. No, it would have to be a sculpture created for giants. It was not until I could temper the all-consuming awe that had taken my mind that I could see this thing for what it was, and then was further stunned at the prospect of a creature of such impossible vastness once living and breathing.

The bones were a metallic gray-black whether thanks to native composition or age I could not tell. As for the creature, it took me a moment to identify, as my gaze wandered over its endless shape. Eventually, I recognized it. This was Mu-Baoth, a Mu-Baoth, if you will. Yet one that dwarfed the leviathan that had sunk The Burning Knave and stranded me in this place.

Because of what Ksenaëe the Wanderer had shown me, I knew the beasts had once been rampant upon the seas of Thür. Not merely the Lapis, where Mu-Baoth hunted, but everywhere. I knew also that Strata had ended somehow when the beasts had frenzied, their bulk hurling the tiny islands that dotted the great world-sea into the magma below and irrevocably reshaping the world into the arid waste of the Second Strata.

I believe now Mu-Baoth to be a single, surviving member of this fell species. I think it must lie dormant on the sea floor, where the water is black and crushing. The Lapis gets its name for its color, and its color comes from its great depth and frigid temperature, ample space for such a creature. I believe Mu-Baoth awakens on some unguessable calendar to feed. Or had, until I broke that cycle. But I am getting ahead of myself again.

In the great skeleton in the valley, the goblins had built a city out of the black basalt so easily quarried in this place. The settlement was beautiful in its way, growing denser as it crept to the middle of the valley between the two broken peaks. They favored long halls and stately pyramids, all decorated with images that echoed the creature in whose skeleton the city now lay. In the middle, at the city's highest point, the peaks were spanned in a spider's web of rope bridges.

I looked into the creature's skull, a beautiful plaza marked with a decorative fountain just inside the gray-black jaws. Buildings extended into the back, where the valley grew deep between the peaks. I could not tell how big the city was, but it appeared expansive, even as in comparison with the skeleton, it was tiny.

Goblins were everywhere. Many were armed and armored as the two I'd seen on the path, but many more looked to be simple peasants, dressed in tunics and loincloths, going about the business of city life. I saw great gardens in city squares, where they cultivated the bizarre plants of this place.

A call pulled at me. It was not a sound in my ear, but a tug on my very soul. In my mind, I saw the rainbow bridge that had once spanned my mouth with that of Ksenaëe, and that bridge became the path that wandered through the jungle, to the lip of the canyon and the open maw of the great leviathan's skeleton. This was where her pathway terminated. This was where my journey led.

The goblin city called to me and I could not resist the siren song. I was still quite in control of myself, however, and would not wander into the center of the settlement like an automaton. My attention went to the peaks, between which the creature's spine spanned, its ribcage extending below. Specifically, the rope bridges and ladders extending down to reach a bulwark of stone pathways captured. Fewer goblins patrolled this place. I wondered what enemies troubled them, but this was a mystery I would not solve.

I crept along the edge of the pathway, up into the gap between the peaks, moving cautiously, alert for both goblins and wild predators. I came to a mad conclusion. Were I in Rhandonia, looking to go into one of the lightless depths where the goblins waited, I might go in the day, assuming that they would be farther from the entrance, perhaps even asleep. These goblins demanded a different approach. I waited for night.

Still empowered by the nectar Ksenaëe fed me, I was quite alert when the cold cloak of night was flung over the valley. I slinked to the lip of the peaks, where the rope bridges descended in a series of cradled switchbacks down to the darkest part of the village. Torches blazed far below, and in the hands of the few sentries that walked these pathways. Unthinkable to the kinds of goblins I was used to, who would have shied or even hissed at the sight of open flame.

I took my time making my way down. The structures were more densely clustered here, all atop one another and connected by stone staircases. Carvings and sculptures depicted what I could now recognize as one of Mu-Baoth's race of leviathans. The city was built in its shadow, and to its glory.

The siren song inside me drew me to the center of this ancient city. I crept down their stone avenues, peering through windows. The goblins slept in great barracks-like arrangements, with apartments for families. I found dank enclosures where peaty mushrooms and bright toadstools grew on heaps of offal in a riot of color and scent. I passed through their open-air gardens and past their artificial canals and streams.

At the center of the city, its highest point, was a tower of sorts, crowned with an ornate building. The carvings here were increasingly stylized, the Mu-Baoths more fearsome, their sails more pronounced. I went inside, and was forced to walk hunched over, as this city was built for beings half my size.

This structure looked to me to be a temple. An altar stood against one end, and a tapestry, the first I'd seen in this place, covered the stone wall. By the diffuse light of the torches outside, I could barely make out the subject. It appeared to be one of the sea serpents, rampant over a field of magma.

I felt myself pulled downward, and after hunting about, I located a staircase leading into the tower. The walls were wet beneath my fingers, the once-fresh jungle air grown increasingly stale as I descended. This place was a maze, lit only periodically by torches. Goblins, most of them armed, wandered about, though none seemed on alert.

After an extended time descending, I judged I must now not only be deep inside this structure, but below ground level as well. Though these goblins were surface-dwellers, they had nonetheless constructed an extensive subterranean metropolis. Perhaps this was merely the only way they could expand into their valley.

I had never seen such a city of goblins. Even in their most concentrated numbers in other areas of the world, they would be confined to settlements I would refer to as villages, or perhaps towns. In my fancy, I wondered if perhaps these day-goblins might outnumber the night-goblins I was far more accustomed to.

And I had placed the most expansive population of goblins I had ever seen between me and escape.

Was I foolish? Oh, most certainly. Yet I hope that my failings can be excused by my curiosity. My time with the Mythseekers had fed it, nurtured it. That damnable war had eaten a heavy piece from my soul. Not only for the things I had done, the things I had witnessed, but the simple fact that I was no longer allowed to explore.

This was what Ksenaëe had reawakened in me. I do not know if she intended this or not, but I suspected she sensed the edges. She was a traveler, and she sensed in me the same. She had given me a destination, and not to take it would be an unforgivable insult after what we had shared. And as I crept through this confining, throatlike darkness, surrounded by enemies I knew would seek my death, nude and armed only with a silver cup, I was alive.

My body sang with need. I knew in that moment, that this was what my life should be. And yes, I would forget this often, but I would return to it, especially in my old age.

The call grew louder, and I knew that I was nearing its source. Sentries grew thicker on the ground as well, though many of them slept. I gave them as much space as I was able, though in some cases I had no other option but to creep past them. Far too often I could reach out and touch the slumbering goblins. I knew this was madness, but I could not stop myself, even if I wanted to.

I do not know how deep I was in the goblin city when I reached my destination. I know only that there could be no other explanation for what I saw and the pull in my soul. A doorway ahead of me glowed with a strange, pelagic light. The source of the call was beyond. I went to it in a state of wonder, my heart thrumming.

When I stepped through the portal I found an expansive vaulted room, the ceiling far out of reach. The glow touched every corner, but lacked any apparent source. In the center of the room was a square pyramid, stairs leading up to a wide, flat area. The stones here were smoothed by countless years. Floating in space above and around the pyramid, were great, oddly-shaped masse of stone without any visible means of support. I stared at the shapes, and saw that they would fit together perfectly and the shape took form in my mind's eye.

It was a colossal stone heart. My mind rebelled at the idea of such a vast organ, turned to stone, disassembled, and now floating in the air, but it was real. The sound of blood slithering through water and the taste of a leviathan's silent roar hummed over my body. The creature in whose body the city now rested was dead, but gods do not truly die. Pieces linger, and the magical energy crackling through the deity's thews could still fire the senses of even a diminished half-wizard.

I made my way up the staircase, gazing about me in wonder. This chamber looked to have been natural in the beginning but now had been modified, sculpted, decorated. I knew that I stood in the middle of a holy site, witnessing things I was never meant to see.

I reached the top of the pyramid, and though I was high over the floor of the chamber, I was still far beneath the ceiling. The pieces of heart floated about me, perfectly still in their places, only the distant throb of the power marking them as existing in their half-life. The top of the pyramid I was at the center of these pieces, at the place the organ was torn asunder.

Yet this was not the only wonder.

At the exact center, where the heart would have burst, a blue-white light shone. I smelled victory in my nose, and felt the cry of triumph on my lips. Yet I could not look past the glow. It was not precisely too bright, but it wormed into my mind, as though flaying it open. Instead looked aloft.

For a moment, my magical senses had returned to me. It was as though Oddrin sat upon my shoulder and reopened a world I thought lost. The smell of lightning lingered in my nose as I traced veins of power from the glow up to three distinct points. Three creatures, imprisoned by the leviathan's broken heart and tethered by the glow, floated above, watching me with curious alien eyes.

Each one of them was a head or more taller than I, but waspishly thin. Their long limbs were bordered in fins, their heads bald save for a single fin down the center. Their eyes were wide and slanted, their pupils five-pointed stars. Their flesh varied in shades. One was teal, another blue-green like the frog-lions, and the last a fetching yellow-gold. I realized then what I was looking at. Their faces were smooth and angular, every corner sharp. They appeared female, or close enough to it, and though they lacked breasts and even nipples, their sexes were five-lobed orifices.

When Ksenaëe showed me the First Strata, these had been the shapes that dwelled in the coral cities. These were the First People.

I looked into their inhuman eyes and I recognized what I saw. Imploring The three of them wanted me to do something.

The teal one spoke, her voice composed of two components. A low baritone hum gave her voice rich heft, while high tones almost out of my hearing that danced over her words gave it subtlety. Though her words were alien, I understood her because she could want nothing else.

"You want me to set you free," I said to them in Abbih. They did not understand my words, but they looked to one another, alien expressions rippling over their inhuman features. They were beautiful, in their way, but it was the beauty of a sculpture.

They spoke to one another, when finally the blue-green one, the tallest of the three, gestured to the glow. The teal one responded vehemently, and then the gold one softly. The other two fell silent for a moment, and then the teal one spoke again.

Their conversation was lost, as a voice behind me raised an alarm. I whirled, and at the base of the pyramid I saw what I believed to be a leader or holy woman of the goblind. Her costume was more ornate, dripping with feathers and gold, and she appeared somewhat wizened against the hale appearance of her companions. These were guards, armed with spear and shield, and clad in their armor. She had ten with her, and with the racket she was making, it was obvious she would soon have many more. I cast about, and my gaze fell onto a portal on the far side of the room. I could, perhaps, flee. As I warmed to the idea, the blue-green one of the three beings shouted. I looked to her.

Her expression was imploring. She one spoke then, and it took me a moment to understand she was addressing me. She pointed to the glow. I thought, perhaps the glow was what powered their imprisonment. Were I still a wizard I could have unwoven the spell. Here, in my present state, I would need a ruder solution. But the nectar of Ksenaëe still flowed through my humors, inspiring me with the boldness of curiosity. I reached into the glow.

It was cool, like a mountain pond. My hand closed around something smooth and slightly warm. It fit in my hand like it was born to my grasp. I drew it from the glow, and the light collapsed around it, revealing what I had taken.

A spear, though such a tiny word is reductive.

First the haft. My hand had closed over a section wrapped in a kind of supple leather I could not identify. The wood was a polished bone white, and warm like the touch of a lover. As I looked upon it, carvings made their way along the haft, burrowing new pathways into what was once a smooth cylinder. A tower rose on the coast of a stormy sea. A tiny figure stood on those cliffs, reading for the clouds. I was looking upon myself at Thunderhead, at the outset of my life.

The carvings continued to spiral up and down the shaft of the spear. The Lamp of Zhahllaia appeared in the design. The Mythseekers showed themselves. I saw Tara and I on the back of the stag, riding hard from pursuing orcs. I stood upon an altar, ghasts being annihilated by the power of my rite, Diotenah's spirit looking over me. Then I the carvings turned to the war. Ships at sea, storms overhead. I saw what could only be the Wooden Bay.

I would learn that the shaft would periodically reform itself, holding fast to some carvings, others changing, shrinking, or even vanishing altogether. The weapon seemed to want to represent my life, keeping what remained important and losing or diminishing what fell away.

Two disks of stone, each set with precious gems, sat at the point where blade met haft. Opals the size of my fist, looking for all the world like the night sky cast in stone, sat in the middle of the disks, orbited by a collection of other, smaller gemstones. The disks were toothed with serrated obsidian, like a ring of teeth.

The blade, longer than my forearm, I initially took to be made of obsidian, and it has proven to be at least as sharp. Unlike obsidian, the blade has never shattered, never chipped, never even dulled. There are also the veins inside of it, like lightning going from the base to the edges, veins that will light with the fire of the heavens during battle or when it channels my power.

As I took the spear in hand, I knew that it was mine in a deeper sense. The carvings told me as much, but it felt right in my hands, an extension of my body. As I took it, the blade flashed with its lightning, and my mind catapulted back. Beyond the goblin city, beyond space and time, hurled back to the beginning.

I saw the world of the First Strata, a planet of ocean and archipelago, a planet of seas filled with beasts of impossible size and bottomless hunger. I saw a creature that looked like Mu-Baoth but dwarfed even that leviathan. It ate entire islands, leaving behind scars in the world, blazing with the orange fire of the earth. The beast was known as Khulum Pal, a name given to it by the goblins and now carried by the city. I stood beneath its skeleton, in the center of its shattered heart.

I saw the three beings now imprisoned, living in their city of coral. All around them they watched their world end, the seas burning and the skies seething. They watched a star fall from the night, to slam into the middle of their island. The three of them, I knew them now to be adventurers, or whatever the equivalent was those long millennia ago, went to the impact site, and there they found a great smoking stone. Within the stone, they found both the glass for the blade and the opals in the disks. Using their impressive power, the blue-green one a warrior of impressive strength, the teal one a sorceress of considerable skill, and the golden one a priestess of their ocean god, forged the stone into a blade and set it with powerful enchantments.

I watched them journey a great island in the north. They found their way to a tree, the first tree like one I would recognize. It bore some resemblance to a xilquinal, the great city-trees of the elves, but the wood had a bone-like quality and radiated warmth. They treated with the inhabitants, a people made of wood, and crafted a shaft for the spear.

The swatch of leather came from the golden one of the three. I watched her unwrap a holy fetish, the tentacled kraken god of their people. She had kept it in this leather, worn soft and smooth by generations of holy hands. She then wrapped the shaft and handed it to her blue-green companion.

They named the spear Ur-Anu. The word meant Fate.

I knew also the names of the three. Such words would be unpronounceable to me, as every word from them contains two, one hidden in the low tones, the other dancing with meaning in the high. I shall translate the meanings, and remember, though each name is two words, to the First Peoeple, this would be only one. The gold one was known as Reborn Seas, the teal as Stirring Rebuke. The blue-green one was Forsaken Shoal.

The three of them lured the leviathan to this place, and while it broke a mountain in half with its hunger, they battled it in the ashes of their world. Forsaken Shoal wielded Ur-Anu, while Stirring Rebuke hurled blades of ice and Reborn Seas sang their wounds closed. The terrible battle ruined swaths of the world. Perhaps they could have stopped its end, or perhaps such things were simply Fate. I saw now that I was witnessing the final moments of this First Strata.

As the world burned, Khulum Pal smashed into the one island still whole. This place. I watched his great bulk break the mountain in two. Forsaken Shoal leapt high, her body ringed with the arcane and holy power of her fellows, and she drove the weapon into the beast's heart.

The battle cracked the island like an egg, and both the heart and the three heroes plunged into the depths of the world. They came to rest here, in this chamber. Some magic remained, the god's power, keeping the three of them in this foul stasis. Weakened by their final battle, they had not the strength to move on into death. They could only wait in this maddening torture, a hideous fate for what I now recognized were three great heroes.

I blinked, and I was once again in my time and place. The goblins had not moved more than a few steps while I beheld the sweep of history. The room rumbled, the pyramid shaking, as though I had pulled an essential brick from its moorings.

I had witnessed the majesty of the spear's purpose in mere heartbeats. The lead goblin saw the weapon in my hand, her eyes widening. Her expression was one of confused wonder, as though she had never seen the spear, or had known it was hidden there in the glow at the heart, waiting to be drawn.

The goblins hesitated. What had been an unarmed man was now armed with a weapon whose power could not be disguised. Whatever fear passed behind the eyes of the leader turned stony. She issued an order that I did not have to speak her language to understand. The shriek carried enough meaning to bridge language and culture.

As they approached, I could feel them through Fate, the energies of their lives snaking through the air into the blade. The veins in the glass fired blue-white, the shaft of the weapon humming in my hand. I felt the desire in the first. He was aggressive. There would be no hesitation in his attack. The one behind him planned to use the other one as a shield, use him to flank me. I could easily kill the first, but the second would have engineered my undoing.

I killed the second one with a quick jab over the shoulder of the first. The blade was so sharp that the goblin's head posed no real obstacle to its path. The first managed a war cry before I knocked him in the side of the head and sent him tumbling down the steps.

As the goblins charged, I was utterly calm, at peace. I saw the threads of my enemies' desires, and I cut them, sending them tumbling down the pyramid to their leader. One by one, the goblins fell to single, precise strokes unimpeded by armor or bone. They were not the equal of the weapon. How could they be? It was forged to slay a god.

Perhaps they could have swamped me, marshalled a single charge to drown me in their bodies. Though I glimpsed their paths on ghostly threads, too many would make the pathways muddled. A few times they baffled the sense, but I had my training. Xeiliope, Einoë, and Kallea had made a spear-fighter of me, and I would not shame them. Even as a second wave of goblins entered the room, I could not be stopped.

Fatigue might have been my enemy were it not for the nectar of Ksenaëe. My limbs were light and Ur-Anu even lighter. I could have fought them for a day, more even. As the third wave broke against me, the room's tremors grew. A piece of the broken heart crashed to the floor, tearing the earth open as easily as an enchanted blade rends flesh and bone. Magma bled from the wound, spilling into the room in lazy, glowing tides. The air shimmered in the heat, my skin grew slick with sweat.

The goblin leader clasped her hands, a prayer on her lips. The heart pieces began to glow, fitfully at first. The one piece on the floor shuddered, even as the magma consumed it, the piece did not melt. Another wave of goblins charged into the room. They gave the veins of orange on the floor a fearful glance, then turned their fear upon me, standing atop the pyramid, the steps wet with goblin gore, the broken bodies of their fellows forming a pathway to me.

I awaited the goblins at the top, letting them navigate the increasingly treacherous road to their death. My skill had been honed by amazons, the masters of the spear. I had blooded myself in real battle and would not give up so simple an advantage as higher ground. Even if Ur-Anu had been a mundane weapon, these goblins would have found me a terrible opponent. With Fate in my hands, I was a requiem.

Another piece of the heart tumbled from its place in the chamber's firmament to slam into the floor. The magic the leader worked shuddered again, the light flickering as the piece fell beneath the rising orange tide. The magma spilled over the borders of the rents, now flowing to the doors. We were sealed inside. With her guards dead, only the leader still lived to face me. She took another few steps up the pyramid, away from the magma, her head bowed in supplication to her divine magic.

I stepped down, ready to finish this thing. The leader's prayer came to its fruition, and the heart thundered in its place as she raised her head. The pelagic glow that had subsumed this place coalesced, leaving behind the flickering inferno light of the magma bleeding from the floor.

The heart pieces shuddered, pulling to one another, but something kept them pinioned in place. The glow clung to them like a sheaf of spiderwebs, then flowed together. I watched in horror as they coalesced in the shape of Mu-Baoth. But it was incomplete, the spell unable to complete. I looked to the fallen pieces of the heart.

I did not have time to think upon it for long. I battled the spell with the spear upon the pyramid as the magma rose. I found a strange sort of contentment as the snapping blue jaws tried to make a meal of me and I sliced away strands of magic holding the shape together. It was a struggle I could respect, this place at the end of the world.

But I did not wish to die. Though the serpent did its best to keep me away from its maker, it could not stay my wrath for long. Eventually, I was able to get around it and introduce the goblin priestess to her Fate. As she expired, the energy-being vanished, leaving behind the orange. Below, the magma had swallowed the doors. I could not tell if it would rise, but I knew that hardly mattered if the heat could finish me.

I backed up the few steps to the top of the pyramid, where the First People waited. They stood on the stones, and I felt that part, though not all, of their imprisonment had been broken.

Forsaken Shoal fell to all fours, her lips spiderlike in their agility as she scuttled to the edge and peered down. She said something to the other two, then returned. All three of them watched me with curiosity.

Closer to them, I found that each was partially transparent, as though she were not fully present in this place. Reborn Seas came to me, her golden hand running over my arm. Though she had a solid touch, I felt the ghost of what I did with Zhahllaia, the sensation of cool breath at the nape of my neck. I saw that Reborn Seas, like her fellows, had only four fingers on her hand, webbing up to the first of her knuckles. She brought her hand to her face, sniffing it with her tiny nose. Her eyes widened and she turned to her friends, telling them something.

I pointed at the magma. As powerful a weapon as Ur-Anu might be, it would be useless against the rising tide. As though to prove it, another piece of the heart fell from its place, slicing open a new rent. A fresh surge of orange bubbled to the roiling surface.

The others joined Reborn Seas. They changed between walking on two legs and moving about on all fours easily, their alien bodies perfectly designed for this mode of locomotion. Even as I saw my own death in the growing orange, I could still appreciate their strange beauty.

Reborn Seas put her mouth to mine. It was not precisely a kiss, for she was harder, more exploratory than the insistent brush of a lover. I felt her tongues, two I found to my surprise, snake their way into my mouth. I gripped her, kissing with all the skill I could muster. If I was to be consumed in magma, I would do so in the throes of passion.

Reborn Seas broke from me, her face excited. She spoke words to her companions. Forsaken Shoal took me in a kiss next, and if I had thought Reborn Seas was rough, her friend was far more forceful. I gripped her hips, caressing the slender curves of her body, my hand finding the soft, ribbonlike fins.

I was hard. The attention from the three strange women, yes, but also the proximity to death. Heat rose from the ruined floor of the chamber, covering me in sweat, making my mind light. Stirring Rebuke's tongues slid from her mouth. Long and lithe, they appeared as gossamer fins. She licked up my leg, catching the beads of my sweat. I couldn't imagine I tasted good, filthy as I was, with old sweat, dirt, and spores atop whatever the descent into this place had left upon me. She brightened, speaking excitedly to the others. Forsaken Shoal left my mouth, her tongues going to my neck, while Stirring Rebuke continued to lick up and down my legs.

I grabbed Reborn Seas, kissing her roughly, my mouth now going to her neck. There I found gill slits. I probed them gently with my tongue, finding the feathery fringes of her gills. She shivered, releasing a squeak.

A caress ran up and over my staff. I looked down, finding that Stirring Rebuke's twin tongues now writhed up my length. One washed over the head of my spear, taking the glittering droplet that had accumulated. Her face lit up, and she said something to the others in excited tones. Forsaken Shoal followed her down, and the two of them teased along my staff. They quickly found that moving up and down would produce a drop of nectar, which one would immediately fight for.

I watched them, though Reborn Seas kept pulling me into a kiss. Finally, with a growl, I carried Reborn Seas to the ground. I spread her legs roughly, lining my staff to her star-shaped sex. She said something to me, the deep tones of her voice dancing with the high ones.

I pushed forward and watched as the five petals of her flower peeled back. Something moved within, a red shape, and it reached for my staff. It enfolded me, and immediately tore a groan from my lips as it pulled me into her petals, which then closed. Whatever had me felt like a tube lined in writhing tongues, running up and down my shaft in blissful rhythm.

She broke into a smile, kissing the corner of my mouth, and then talking to her fellows. They knelt next to me, their tongues returning to my flesh, running all over me, licking every deposit of sweat into their mouths.

With alien agility, Reborn Seas put her palms and the bottoms of her feet onto the stone, leveraging herself up. She kept hold of me where our sexes joined, and I clutched her shoulders in the sudden movement. Then she was on top of me. I wanted to move against her, but her incredible sex meant I didn't have to. It ran up and down mine, the overlapping tongues washing every corner of me.

The other two turned back to their licking. I was curious. I grabbed Stirring Rebuke, hauling her to me. After a moment of confusion, of chattering to her fellows, she seemed to understand what I wanted and squatted down over my face. With her teal sex lit by the glow of the magma gave me my first close look. Each slit in her body looked a bit like one in a human, with a divot at the top, almost like a keyhole. They met in a five-pointed star of flesh. I ran my tongue along the star-shaped slit, going up and down each petal.

Perhaps I found the key, for she bloomed. The five petals peeled back, and within her, I saw a stalk. It was a tube of meaty red, open at one end and ringed in small tendrils tipped with tiny, fleshy barbels. These reached for me, stroking my questing mouth. I wondered if I was the first human ever to perform the knight's kiss on such beings, the first to lay with them. I would have to make a good accounting of myself, even as the magma rose.

I did not think much of my impending death, not with Stirring Rebuke kneeling over my face. She was not as warm as my other partners had been, a cool sense like the sea itself. Her taste reminded me of Thalalei, but it was a different kind of sea, one not nearly as salty, and with a refreshing mineral quality behind the thick fluids that coated her alien sex. In a way, it was like my first time, beneath my furs at Thunderhead, licking Mira's black-fleeced orchid, listening for her sighs and moans. Stirring Rebuke did not offer me instruction, as Mira had, and for that I was sad. I liked laying with these creatures, and should the opportunity ever arise, I would do so again. I would hope to be a skilled lover.

As the fleshy petals of her sex tried to close over my face, I continued to lick and suck whatever I could find. She would adjust herself, angling one part, and I took such hints, chasing her pleasure as I drank her nectar.

Meanwhile, my other lovers were not idle. Forsaken Shoal's tongues still wandered over my body. It was a sweet tickle, raising gooseflesh where she went. Reborn Seas's sex continued its work upon me, feeling far more like a knight's kiss than anything else. Yet it was a knight's kiss with astonishing skill as the overlapping tongues milked my staff.

My bliss came upon me suddenly, bursting forth in gouts. Reborn Seas gave a moan so low it rumbled through the stones, a higher-pitch over the top of it, each at either edge of my hearing.

Both Stirring Rebuke and Forsaken Shoal made a strange noise, and I did not think they had their bliss. Stirring Rebuke spidered off of me, and I looked up at Reborn Seas. She shimmered, her body growing intangible. Her head was thrown back, her body tensed. Light poured from her, erasing everything around us in gold. She looked down at me, her eyes now blazing with light.

She stood, and her sex retracted from mine, the petals of her sex closing. I saw not a single drop of my seed escape her. She spoke again and the two others knelt beside me, inspecting my softening staff. I followed their gaze. The remains of my juices covered me, and in the light of the spell Reborn Seas was covered in, it shone with all the colors of the rainbow. I thought of the juices I had absorbed of Ksenaëe.

Stirring Rebuke bent over, her tongues running over me, swallowing what she found. She said a few words to Forsaken Shoal. Stirring Rebuke took me in her mouth, getting me swiftly hard. I reached over to Forsaken Shoal, teasing her petals. She opened, and swallowed my hand. I felt the stamen of her, the tendrils wrapping about my wrist, drawing my hand in. I began to work it in and out her. She closed her eyes, making that twin-pronged moan. Although her hips were still, I could feel the structure of her sex pumping against my hand.

Stirring Rebuke milked me to full hardness and then along to a second explosion. Reborn Seas stood over us, her arms flung wide. The golden light that now surrounded us appeared as a cloak around her. It enclosed us in our embrace. I felt the touch of something else, something huge and powerful beyond the golden light. Something looking down at us, as though just awakened. Love enfolded me, as as the bliss exploded into Stirring Rebuke's hungry mouth, that feeling deepened. I felt her swallowing every spurt of me, her tongues encouraging jet after hot jet.

Stirring Rebuke stood, now moving to the other side of the little circle, flinging her arms out. Now teal energy joined the gold, veins of the other color working into the great cloak. This was a different kind of magic, a cousin of the kind I used to practice. Their spell joined, grew stronger.

I turned to Forsaken Shoal. I was hard. I had never gone soft this time. I took her, guiding her onto all fours. Her sex opened for mine, the appendage gripping me, drawing me in. The other times I had achieved my bliss had the opposite effect. I stirred it more quickly this time, surging with power as I thrust into her body. She was game, and though outwardly still, her insides surged and massaged and sucked and kneaded. I could only hold on as her sex pulled the bliss from me.

It crashed out of my body, lighting the way. I do not know how I had more seed left in me, but I did. I felt it splashing into that strange organ, and she let out a blissful two-toned cry. She left me, and joined her sisters in the ring, adding blue-green to the colors. They looked down at me with shining eyes, and I swear I saw gratitude light their faces.

The light closed in on me and I was in a place outside sense and time.

When I next opened my eyes, I lay on the jungle floor, Ur-Anu next to me. Of the three strange creatures, there was no sign. The two peaks of the goblin city rose over the treetops far away, and I judged myself to be inland of them. I picked up the great spear and continued on my path, holding the memories of the three First People in my heart.

In my hand, I gripped Ur-Anu the Blackspear, my Fate. Though it would leave me for a time, this weapon would become a part of my legend, an indelible piece of the archmage Belromanazar.