The pressure and the constant sense of being watched at the edge of his awareness slowly dissipated, but it soon became clear to Leon that the darkness magic polluting the air wasn’t dissipating by any appreciable amount.  Combined with the lingering sense of futility that the red eye had left him with, he just about collapsed in exhaustion right there in the center of Yu Nok Tor.

Tiraeses followed suit, seeming as affected by lingering thoughts of the red eye as Leon.  The armored newcomer, on the other hand, was well enough to still be in the mood to speak.

“Shiiiiit,” she murmured.  “I’d almost given all knowledge of how much it kinda sucks to break one of these things to old Mulitan…”

“Mulitan, Lord of Memory,” Tiraeses corrected, his exhaustion clearly not enough to make him forget the proper way to address his gods.

“Whatever you say, old man,” the newcomer said.  Tiraeses just grunted and didn’t otherwise respond.

After a moment of silence, during which Leon just sat there trying to clear his head, he asked the newcomer in a slow, deliberate cadence so that his azurian was intelligible, “So, what’s your name?”

The newcomer turned to him, her enormous suit of armor turning quite lightly and swiftly for its size.  “Mari’Kha,” she replied.

“Well met.  I’m Leon Raime, from the plane of Aeterna.  He’s Tiraeses.”

“Tiraeses,” Mari asked incredulously.  “You look like the Red-eyed Bitch is hovering over your shoulder, but your name is Tiraeses?  Are you a child?”

Tiraeses grew more and more embarrassed with every word, and Leon didn’t need to wonder why—it was easy for him to forget since after more than a week, he’d internalized the word as referring to the old monk.  But the word ‘tiraeses’ essentially meant ‘nobody’.  Given the way that Mari responded, though, he wondered if he was missing some other cultural reference to the name.

“Wise are the young, who respect their elders,” Tiraeses growled.

“Don’t quote the Mandian Canticles at me, nellian.”

“I’m not old enough to be a nellian,” Tiraeses argued.  “And I hope you remember disparaging me for my age when you’re older.  I’m not that much past middle age, kid, and the Red-Eyed One will come for you swifter than you’ll ever hope for.”

“In this gods-forsaken land, of course she will,” Mari muttered.

Eager to shift the topic away from what had started the argument—though Leon noted for the first time since Tiraeses had introduced himself to at some point ask the monk for his real name—Leon said, “Mari’Kha, you’ve destroyed these foci before?”

“I have,” Mari answered.  “A bunch, actually.  There was a big push out of the Blue Sky to try and stop this planar degradation, and me and my father were called up to help.”

“The Kingdom of the Blue Sky yet exists?” Tiraeses excitedly asked.

Mari’s armor folded its arms and though Leon couldn’t see the woman herself, he could practically see her trying to avoid eye contact.

“In… in a way,” she hesitantly and quietly confirmed.  “Most of the Mandian Lands are fucked.  Like, gone.”  The armor unfolded its arms and gestured to the ruins of Yu Nok Tor all around them.  “Looks kinda like this city.”

“And King Ard’Khil?” Tiraeses pressed.

Mari hesitated even longer to answer, and when she did, her tone was halting and apologetic.  “Ard’Khil was taken by the Red-Eyed One more than twenty years ago.  His brother, Ard’Khun has run the Kingdom since.  Or… until last month, anyway…”

Tiraeses paled when Mari reported the death of the King and sat down in shock.  Mari didn’t add anything more, so the silence dragged on for several seconds until Leon decided to break it.

“Why don’t you tell us more?” he asked.  “I’m obviously from Aeterna, not Arkhnavi, and my friend here has been living further west for some time, so neither of us are in the know about the current situation in the Mandian Lands.  I don’t suppose you could fill us in?”

Mari’s armor shifted, but after a moment, she replied, “Sure, I’ll tell ya what I know.  But… this is actually a little uncomfortable, so let me…”

The armor kneeled with more grace than its thirty-foot frame seemed to allow, and then the armor’s chest plating opened like the petals of a flower, revealing the armor’s interior.  Leon found himself looking at Mari herself, sitting in a seat with wide armrests covered in a dense web of runic control enchantments.  Mari hardly waited until the armor finished opening before unstrapping herself from the seat and leaping down, showing Leon that the back of the chair had a large black crystal set right about where the base of Mari’s skull would rest when piloting the huge suit of armor.

Mari herself was a bit on the short side, and had a paler skin tone than Tiraeses, giving her a more peach-colored skin than the monk’s orange.  She was lithe and fit, and dressed in an almost skintight all-black one-piece suit, while around her neck was a silver neckpiece that had a black crystal on the back that would touch the crystal in her armor when she sat in it.  Most surprising to Leon, though, was her apparent age—he doubted she was older than twenty—and her sixth-tier aura.

“You… are a lot younger than I expected,” Leon said.

“Didja think I was a granny?” Mari asked with a smile and a wink.  “I may be a young bitch, but the Ulta suit I built is more powerful than three Ultian pilots thrice my age!”

“You built this… ‘Ulta’ suit?” Leon asked, nodding at the armor.

Mari grinned.  “Sure did, Lele.”  Her grin faded slightly, though, and she added, “My dad… he, uh… well, I mean, it’s based on his designs.  He was the best Azurian Ulta smith this side of… anywhere, I should think.  I learned all I know from him.”

“Your father sounds like an amazing man,” Leon said appreciatively, noting her hesitation to speak of him, and his absence even though she told him not long ago that she and her father had participated in the Kingdom of the Blue Sky’s recent push.

“By Mandious, Lord of All in Heaven,” Tiraeses interjected, “tell me of the Kingdom.  Tell me of the Blue Sky.”

Mari sighed, her eyes bouncing from the monk to Leon and back again several times.  Finally, she launched right in.  “Shit’s been going to shit for a long time,” she explained.

“Seventy years,” Tiraeses murmured.

“Longer than that, but not that much,” she corrected.  “The Blue Sky have been trying to stem the tide, but they did it alone.  The Red Sky was like, ‘nah’, whenever the Blue Sky was like, ‘we should ally.’  And those idiots in the Silver Hall were like, ‘ewww, why would we do something that would actually help people, so gross!’  So when all the shit went down, the Blue Sky was like, on its own.  And we stayed on our own for like, forever.  Cities were lost, borders were thrown back, all that.  Much ruin and desolation.”

“You speak of it so casually,” Tiraeses quietly complained.

Mari smiled bitterly at him.  “Don’t take it to mean I don’t care, old man.”

“Please,” Leon interposed before they could start an argument, “continue.”

Mari glared at Tiraeses before doing as Leon requested.  “When all the darkness and stuff was able to get past the Blue Sky’s borders and reach the Red Sky, those dumb bitches finally realized that they were fucked unless they made the alliance the Blue Sky had been asking for.  They still dragged their feet, like, ‘noooo, we’d rather all die than do the right thiiiiiing!!!’  But finally, finally, they got their heads out of their asses and allied.  Their Princess married Ard’Nara, Ard’Khil’s son, and Ard’Khun’s heir.  There was a biiig party celebrating the union of the Two Skies, and then we went to war.”

She paused and grimaced for just a moment, but Leon noticed.

“We… got our asses handed to us, really.  I think this was… five years ago?  We lost most of our Ultian pilots in that last push.  My father had retired years ago after designing a bunch of Ultas for the army, but he decided to build more back home.  My Ulta suit—and his—was the result of this work.  When the call came that some new people arrived and a new offensive was being planned, he and I were conscripted.  We didn’t want to go, but the officer was like, ‘it’s a matter of life and death for the Two Skies, you’re coming with us or we’ll put you to death for desertion.’  Dick.”

“These ‘new people,’” Leon said, “were they from other planes?”

“Yeah!” Mari exclaimed.  “Uuh, I think it was two tenth-tier mages?  They came all swaggering in and looking to get to Tell Kirin, and I can get why the Two Skies thought that they had a better chance with them on our side.”

“Do you know which ones?” Leon asked.

“Ummm, no?  I only saw them once, they weren’t asking to meet me.  Kinda stuck-up bitches, really.”

Leon nodded and called upon what little light magic he knew—which was still more than the earth magic he knew—to project the profiles of the ten mages sent ahead of him that Ambrose had shown him.

“Can you point them out?”

Mari stared at the profiles, and when she wrinkled her nose like she’d caught a whiff of something rotten, he knew she’d recognized at least one.

“This one,” she said, pointing to the profile of a middle-aged woman with bright orange hair, dark blue skin, and scars on her face.  The profile gave her a neutral expression, but Mari said, “I’d recognize that bitch anywhere.  Walked around like she pissed old Mandy’s holy oils.”

Tiraeses strangled off a cry of complaint.

“This one, too,” she said, pointing to the portrait of a handsome dark-skinned man with short black hair.  “He wasn’t publicly dicky to anyone, at least.”

Leon nodded.  “Queen Larkoina, from Discaria, and First Man of the People Alle Kon Harae, from Neustaria.”

“Makes sense she was a fuckin’ Queen,” Mari grumbled.  “So, yeah, they came down, and the Two Skies were like, ‘we can finally do something!  By the Mother’s great swingin’ tits!’”

“Must you blaspheme with every breath?!” Tiraeses complained.

“Yes,” she replied with a challenging smile.  Without waiting for him to respond, she continued.  “We formed the last army we could, pooling all of our resources.  All who could be conscripted, were, and then we were off!  We… well, we took a buncha cities, but…”  She paused and her voice hitched before she kept going.  “We… lost a buncha people, too… Ard’Khun among them.  My dad… too…”

Leon sighed in commiseration, and as she choked back some tears.  He walked over and laid his hand on her shoulder as she visibly shuddered with effort to control herself.  After a few seconds, she managed to calm herself down.

“Sorry…” she murmured.

“No need to be,” Leon responded.  “I understand well the pain of losing one’s father.”

She gave him a sympathetic look before taking a few more seconds to steady herself.

“This… this war made progress, but we still got shafted in the end.  We lost too many retaking cities, destroying their crystal thingies in the center, and then moving on.  The Blue Sky was never made whole, and the effort failed.  Around Tell Ce’Tir, we were met by the largest dark army I’d ever seen.  Monsters stretched as far as the eye could see.  We were surrounded and crushed.  I barely got away thanks to my Ulta… thanks to the engine my dad designed.”

Leon glanced at the suit again, a slight smile on his face.  He desperately wanted to study it, but he sensed that this was the wrong moment to ask.

“What can you tell me about these foci?” he asked as he gestured at the place where the purple crystal was once.

“Not much,” she answered.  “That red ball was new.  I’ve helped to break them before, and they’ve always kinda made me sick when they shattered, but this one was kinda intense…”

Leon cocked an eyebrow.  The eye showed itself for… him?  Or was there something special about this particular focus?

“How did you come this far west?” Tiraeses inquired a little interrogatively.

Mari scowled at him for a moment before answering, “The ways back home were blocked.  I ran westward.  Had to stop a few times to charge my batteries, but the monsters… the monsters chose to go northeast instead of follow me…”

“To the remnants of the Kingdom of the Blue Sky,” Tiraeses whispered.  “May the brothers of war, Valiant Ashatar and Strong Ashagon be with them.”

“Invoke the gods all you want, old man, it won’t change anything,” Mari bitterly spat.

Tiraeses glared at her, but again, Leon headed off a potential conflict before it could arise.

“Let people take comfort in whatever they wish in times of great need,” he said.  “For now, I need to get to Tell Kirin.  Mari’Kha, will you accompany me to the Mandian Lands?”

Mari stared at him like he was crazy, but to his relief, didn’t immediately turn him down.  “I… that’s a real ask there, Lele.  You’re cute, but are you cute enough to follow into the devil’s den?”  She gave him a quick scan, her eyes rolling all over his body.  “Hmm.  Hmmmmm….”

“You’re going to let the fate of Arkhnavi depend on someone’s looks?” Tiraeses asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” she nonchalantly replied, her eyes never leaving Leon.  He wasn’t sure whether her reply was serious or just intended to get under Tiraeses’ skin.  After spending a good few seconds evaluating Leon, she said, “My dad was eager to see this through.  For his sake, I’ll join you.  I didn’t much like the idea of running away to die in some forgotten corner of the plane all that endearing, anyway.  I’d rather face the Red-Eyed Bitch herself than have the bitch run me down.”

“Curb your blasphemy,” Tiraeses growled.

“No,” she replied, though this time Leon was sure she wasn’t being too serious.

“Great,” Leon said with a wide smile.  “I’ll certainly be encouraged to have someone else join us.”

“We invite the gods’ wrath with one as impious as her joining us,” Tiraeses argued.

“We have less than nine months before this plane is destroyed,” Leon retorted.

“Huh?  What the fuck?!” Mari responded.

“We need all the help we can get,” Leon finished.

Tiraeses scowled deeply, causing so many wrinkles to appear on his face that he started to appear as old as Mari claimed he was in her teasing.

“I’m sure we don’t need her,” the monk stated.  “The Red-Eyed One will stalk our path because of this.”

“Hey!” Mari shouted.  “No that bitch won’t, and what the fuck is this about Arkhnavi being destroyed?!”

Leon jumped in before Tiraeses could get too heated, cutting the monk off as he was taking a deep breath—readying himself to launch into a legendary castigation, Leon was sure.

“Arkhnavi is part of a planar cluster called the Divine Graveyard…” Leon explained, quickly filling Mari in on the most important pieces of information, such as the Grave Wardens, who was sent, why they were sent, and the costs of failing in their task.

“So,” Mari said, looking like she was reeling from all that Leon shared, “if we fail, then all these other ‘Grave Wardens’ will destroy Arkhnavi?  Because we have devils—Primal Devils—buried beneath the ground here?”

“Yes,” Leon confirmed.

Mari stared at him for a long moment, then simply said, “Fuck.”  A look of existential dread began to slowly spread across her face.

“It’s important that we reach Tell Kirin,” Leon said.  “My method for getting off this plane was… ineffective at its only job.  The only way I can think of that we might be able to escape would be by reaching Qo Weylekh’s palace at the center of Tell Kirin.  There might be some way to get off Arkhnavi there, and I’ll be able to report to my Grave Warden what’s been happening here.  He’d probably be able to fix it all with a wave of his hand.  And, lest we forget, any other mages sent by the other Grave Wardens will be heading that way, too.”

Leon paused a moment and gave Mari a significant look.

“Larkoina and Alle Kon Harae.  Did they survive that final battle?”

Mari frowned.  “I didn’t see ‘em fall, but if they survived it’s because the bitches ran away or were captured.  The… the ‘devils’ won the battle that day.”

Leon nodded.  “We’ll assume they’re gone.  That means there are still eight other mages from the other planes unaccounted for.  If we’re lucky, we might run into them at some point.  Our chances of reaching Tell Kirin will be greater together.”

“We had two and an entire army,” Mari riposted.

“And you escaped,” Leon pointed out.  “Three people can move a lot faster and more nimbly than an army.  We’re also not trying to take and hold territory.  That means we can skip centers of Devilish power wherever we can.”  He paused and gave Tiraeses a look.  “We’re going to have to update our path.  No swinging around to check up on the Kingdom of the Blue Sky.  From here, we’re heading as straight for Tell Kirin as we can.”

Tiraeses looked like he wanted to argue, but after a few seconds with his mouth hanging open, he simply closed it and nodded.

“Thank you,” Leon said.  He glanced at his two comrades.  “We may not be the best companions for each other, but we’re all we have.  Let’s not let any petty rivalries or potential dislike for one another get in the way of our mission.  The mages from the other planes may all be dead, and we know the Kingdom of the Blue Sky failed to solve this.  All of Arkhnavi may be depending on us.  The entire plane may be resting upon our shoulders.  So let’s try and keep the peace between us.”

He fixed Mari in his golden gaze.  “Try to refrain from blasphemy.  Please.  You may have problems with the gods of Arkhnavi, but they mean a lot to Tiraeses.  There are other ways to express frustration.”

Mari took a deep breath while glaring at Tiraeses.  She then gave him a thin-lipped smile and turned back to Leon.  “Fine.  Fine.  I can hold my tongue if some thin-skinned people can’t handle me.”

“That’s all I ask,” Leon said.  He then glanced at Tiraeses.  He didn’t say anything to the monk, but he was hoping he wouldn’t have to.

“If she does not take the gods’ names in vain,” Tiraeses said, “if she keeps a lid on her blasphemy, then I can tolerate her, Mother Above grant me strength.”

Mari snorted derisively but didn’t say anything.

“Great,” Leon exclaimed.  “Now, Mari’Kha, since you have the most experience dealing with all of this, I hope you’re willing to give us more information on what we might be facing…”

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