One world barren and bare, its vampiric denizens left for good. Flown on light, from one star to the next, souls trapped in waves, waiting for their revenge.

Events had been set in motion since the banishment. Since their defeat more than two millennia in the past for those on Rythe, a mere moment or an age past for those along the way.

A sun screamed in death, its last agony told to its cousins, its brothers, its birth brood. The message sped from star to star, heralding the arrival of their blight, their bane.

The Sun Destroyers come.

Their last hope, a wizard entombed, three mortals whose only crime was to be born in a time of legend. For two thousand years, the twin suns of Rythe had waited for the return. Now the moment had come. The wizard still slumbered, but the revenant was awake. He ranted beneath the earth, stone and ice.

Three would come together. The swords had spoken, the three still lived.

In the skies above, the suns watched. They shed tears, and flames roiled across their burning surface. Suns die, too. To rest would mean the death of their children. They spawned their children. Now, it was down to them to be their saviours.

Three come as one. Priests to save them, surround them with light. The suns’ emissaries on Rythe. Could they hold back the dark?

Some say legends come again, live through the ages. Some say legends live again, as long as a sun. Some say it is mere serendipity, wishful thinking on the part of mortals who write history and myth for their progeny.

There is serendipity in all things, but on Rythe the simplest coincidence is presaged by black toothed grins and blood.

Quintal held up a hand, and they halted at a turn in the corridor.

“Quiet, now. They know we are here. There is no need for them to find us yet.”

Roth growled deep in its throat, anxious to be about the battle. “I smell them. Wait, and I will clear a path.”

“Time enough for fighting later, Roth,” Quintal told the rahken. “For now, we need to find the chamber. This blasted warren has me all turned around, but we cannot fight our way out. Hold your fury in check, until we have need of it.”

Roth rumbled, but complained no more.

From above, at the head of unseen stairs, the sound of iron shod boots clattering on the stone steps came, harsh and ominous. In the echoing hallway the noise was amplified until it sounded like a marching army.

“Where is it?” whispered Tirielle. “All their symbols look the same — a peak within a white circle should not be too hard to find!” She spoke too fast, exasperation and desperation in her quavering voice.

“Be calm, lady,” said Cenphalph, more quietly than Tirielle had spoken. “We will find it.”

“I don’t know how,” muttered Typraille under his breath, but at a stern glance from their leader said nothing further.

“This way,” said Quintal. He sounded unsure, and somewhat embarrassed by the realisation himself.

They followed him at a run, down a turn in the corridor and away from the approaching soldiers. They turned several times, checking the symbols outside each chamber as they ran. Nothing. No peaks, no circles. A half moon, a flowing river, a tower nestled in a crescent…some were painted, some were not. Some symbols were so strange that they sent shivers down Tirielle’s spine. She dreaded to think what planes of existence they led to, whether the Seer’s mind had traversed those other worlds, their plateaus and plains, their peaks and canyons.

If only the Seer were here to guide them now. She had said nothing of where to find the chamber. She had not warned them of the immensity of Arram’s underground caverns, or the confusing nature of the warren.

To what worlds and places must the Protectorate be able to travel? It was huge beyond imagining. She despaired of ever finding the true path. It was a maze, full of twisting corridors, misleading turns and cross ways, with no guiding marks but those on the great doors that lead to portals behind them, the portals in turn leading to places from which there might be no return. Death awaited behind some of those doors, Tirielle was certain of it. To flee through the wrong one would be fatal. If they could not find the right path, none of them would leave Arram’s bowels alive.

They came at a run to a dead end.

The soldiers were in the corridors now. Their booted feet clattered on the flagstones. The soldiers would know their way among the corridors. They would understand the symbols, and the trick of sound within the corridor would not confuse them. They would be upon them sooner than Tirielle would have liked.

She fingered her fine blades through the soiled material of her dress. She would die before she let them capture her. She could not face torture. Not at the hands of the Protectorate. She knew that they embraced pain, and fed on suffering. She would not be food for them.

Roth saw her quivering and lay a massive hand on her shoulder. As always, Tirielle took strength from the beast’s touch. She was ever thankful to have Roth in her life. She placed her own hand on top of the furred paw and patted it, steeling herself for the battle to come.

They followed Quintal back to the branch in the corridor, and looked each way. Quintal drew his sword, and his brethren followed suit, the thin twang of steel loud in the hallway. There was no sign of the Protectorate.

“You can’t fight the whole of the Protectorate! We must run,” she said with heartfelt urgency. She was shaking now, feeling death approach. They were close now, and there was no way out in sight.

“To where?” said Typraille, his voice firm and sure. She imagined he was looking forward to the battle, and hated him a little for his calm and his eager tone.

“We will find it,” she said.

The clamour of boots on stone was nearer now — perhaps one corridor away, perhaps five hundred feet. The strange pathways under Arram had their own rules. Perhaps millennia of dark magic warped even sound, as it warped their perceptions.

“I think the tunnels are trying to confuse us. I think it is the magic here. It doesn’t want us…we are alien.”

Quintal nodded. “I have felt something working against us, tendrils of darkness pushing at my mind.”

“If it doesn’t want us to find the right chamber, how will we ever get out of here?”

j’ark strode forward, taking the lead. “We are committed now. We cannot leave and we cannot go on unless we find the path. I have an idea, though.”

The other Sard exchanged glances. Quintal was never one to take offence at j’ark’s refusal to follow his lead. J’ark was a powerful man in his own right. Perhaps Quintal understood that j’ark was at his most effective when given free rein. The leader nodded to his fellow paladins, only six remaining, and strode after j’ark. Roth grinned at Tirielle.

“I think I will get my wish. I find myself longing to see Protocrat blood.”

“You are gruesome sometimes, Roth. Their blood stinks of offal.”

Roth looked hurt. “I happen to like offal.”

Tirielle looked away and saw what she feared, j’ark running at a Protocrat who had rounded the corner suddenly. There was no room to swing a blade in the corridor, but somehow j’ark’s two-handed sword turned aside a thrust from the Protocrat’s short sword, an elbow found his throat and the soldier crumpled. With no battle cry or ceremony Carth leapt the crumpled form and fell upon the following soldiers, tumbling them. There was no room for more to fight, but Carth could hold the corridor indefinitely — only two soldiers could pass abreast, and two tenthers were no match for the mighty warrior. He seemed to tower in the gloom, filling the corridor with his girth. He used his long dagger to stab low, and his sword to turn aside the short swords of the Protectorate.