They were the Mharog, Fey who had given themselves utterly to evil. Immensely powerful. Utterly merciless. With skin as pale as snow and pure black eyes like bottomless chasms, they were frightening creatures, and even Vadim Maur, who owned their souls, harbored a carefully hidden terror of them.

“You summoned us to serve?” The tallest of the six asked the question. His voice was a whispered song of power, mesmerizing and deadly. Azurel he was called now, though once he’d claimed another name that had been celebrated in the Fading Lands.

“Your old friend Rain Tairen Soul has a truemate.”

A dangerous light sparked in Azurel’s black eyes. During the Mage Wars, he’d been sent by Rain Tairen Soul to fight in the desperate, bloody battle that had delivered him into Mage hands and ultimately drove him down the Dark Path. Over the centuries, Vadim had used that event to batter down the dahl’reisen’s defenses and breed hatred in his heart for the Fey and for Rain Tairen Soul in particular.

“One of my Mages had captured them, but the dahl’reisen who’ve harried us for so many years along the borders rescued them. The dahl’reisen harbor them now.” He’d never sent a force capable of defeating the dahl’reisen into Celieria before, afraid of tipping his hand, but the need for discretion was over. It was time to release the hunters and let them pursue their prey. “You will track them down, destroy the dahl’reisen village, and bring the girl and any survivors to me. The Tairen Soul is yours to kill.”

He gestured to a shadowy corner of his office, where a hard-eyed Mage in rich blue robes stood in silence. A sash heavily laden with jewels of achievement circled his waist several times and hung down to the floor. “This is Primage Dur. He will accompany you, along with two hundred of my Mages and a garrison of my best men into Celieria.”

“Your men will hinder us.”

“Don’t be a fool and don’t take me for one,” Vadim snapped. “Six Mharog, even ones as powerful as you, aren’t strong enough to confront the Tairen Soul and hundreds of dahl’reisen on your own. Besides, the Feyreisen’s mate is Fey born. Your touch would kill her. My men accompany you so that she will be returned to me alive. If she is not, rest assured you will continue your service to me in demon form.”

Azurel hesitated long enough to make Vadim gather his power, then he gave a lingeringly insolent bow. “It will be as you command.”

As silently as they had entered, the Mharog slipped away. Vadim sat as his desk for several long chimes, his fingers steepled.

Celieria ~ The Dahl’reisen Village 8th day of Seledos

Dawn broke over a beautiful land of lush forests. As the sun rose, pastel morning skies became vivid cerulean, bright and cloudless over a verdant countryside. Shining lakes and rivers teemed with fish. Flocks of birds soared above herds of pronghorns bounding through thick forests. Silver-horned Shadars thundered across open plains, while winged Aquilines danced over glassy mountain lakes, touching golden hooves and feathered wingtips lightly on the water’s surface in a show of aerial mastery.

A familiar roar sounded, and Ellysetta turned to see a pride of tairen race across the sky, fur shining in the sunlight. Dozens of juveniles flew with the pride, some engaging in mock battles, while others tested their wings for the first time beneath the watchful eyes of their elders. Attentive adults flew below and behind the smallest of the kitlings, ready to break an infant’s fall or snatch a weary kit from the sky.

The tairen flew north, towards the jagged volcanic peaks of the Feyls, where Ellysetta could see hundreds more tairen circling the updrafts around the smoking peaks and launching themselves into the sky from the labyrinth of caverns riddling the range.

She turned her eyes west, and there was Dharsa, a shining jewel of white stone and golden spires rising from the forested hills like a crown. Moored boats bobbed in the harbor, while others sailed up and down the River Faer. The city streets were busier than she’d ever seen them, thronged with thousands of Fey, Elves, and other races.

And there were children. Hundreds of children. Infants cradled in their mothers’ arms. Toddlers playing in orchards and gardens overflowing with starry white Amarynth. Fey youths gathered in the Warrior’s Academy and the walled courtyards of the Hall of Truth and Healing as robed elders instructed them in the ways of magic and Light.

The Feyreisen’s palace rose from the city’s central hill, and there in the courtyard outside the Hall of Tairen, stood Marissya and Dax and with them a tall warrior in black leathers who was idly scratching the ear of the brown tairen kitling at his side. Three other kitlings played in the Source-fed fountain while an adult tairen Ellysetta did not recognize perched on the golden roof overlooking the courtyard. As if sensing her presence, the young warrior looked up. Eyes like blue stars—whirling with the opalescent radiance of the tairen—met hers.

«Keralas,» she whispered, and the warrior—Marissya and Dax’s as yet unborn Tairen Soul son—smiled.

The whirling radiance of his eyes flashed, a blue star-burst that intensified to dazzling white light that blotted out her vision.

When she could see again, she was no longer in Dharsa. She was, instead, at Orest, and a Dark army stretched across the land like a blanket of death. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Armed and armored, man and monster standing side by side, their eyes pitiless chasms of malice. At the head of the army stood the personal guard of the Dark Queen, thousands of once-Fey warriors, faces scarred, eyes black and merciless, their once-shining skins now a lurid, corpse white, utterly devoid of the warm silvery Light that had once suffused them. They looked the perfect vision of the unspeakable evil they had become.