‘I’ve seen them fight… horrible and beautiful at the same time… Some say them Emahra single-handedly won the Shatter Wars… I was there… I wouldn’t argue the point. I’d be a fool if I even thought to…’

-General Talbot Sands, veteran from the Shatter Wars, speaking on the Emahra and their powers, while talking to some uninformed Katati politicians

Nell’s dreams were troubled and disjointed. He saw himself in his dreams, but he hardly recognized himself, he was a warrior, sometimes he was a Wyzard. He saw himself running from evil. He saw a most beautiful woman – Alathor, it looked like – smiling at him. He saw an ugly stone bridge spanning an angry ocean. He saw a dark and forbidding forest, and something about it was unique – not the look so much as the feel. Then he saw himself standing somewhere, everything around him seemed a blur, and someone stood before him, with his back to Nell. The man wore heavy black armour and a long inky cape, and he slowly started to turn.

Nell woke up with a start, never seeing the man, and he found, very quickly, that he was shivering. He wasn’t laying in water, but wherever he was, it was quite damp. It was also very dark, and Nell feared, for a moment, he might see nothing in this terribly dark tomb, but as he sat up, he noticed a soft glow in his closed hand, which he opened promptly. Laying in his palm was the key he’d used to open the door, and in his now open palm it glowed brighter, giving him a quite large bubble of soft blue light around him.

He looked about and found that, as he’d suspected, he was in a cavern. The walls were dark and damp, and in the distance was the sound of dripping water. When Nell looked up, all he could see was darkness. Even directing his glowing key as best he could, he couldn’t see the ceiling, nor the door he’d passed through. He found it very odd indeed that no water had followed him down here, as in, it hadn’t filled up the chamber, drowning him. Also… the apparent terribly long fall hadn’t killed him.

With a grunt Nell climbed to his feet and he glanced about. There were gloomy tunnels in the distance ahead, and rock formations that almost looked like they’d grown out of the floor. Still, staring at it all, Nell was unsure what he should do, or where he should go. At the very least, he was glad to be away from the Dark Spirits.

Then he thought of Fingold.

‘Oh, Fingold,’ he said, glancing up to the ceiling again, ‘I hope you’re all right. I hope you got away.’ Angry at himself, Nell thought he should have tossed his rifle away and held Fingold in his hand, for all the good his weapon had done.

Now Fingold was who knows where, and he could be hurt.

It would have been nice to have a companion down here in this gloom as well, Nell thought to himself.

He didn’t like being alone. He didn’t like the dark.

He looked around the underground chamber again and held his key up like a torch. ‘What should I do now?’ he asked himself, his voice echoing off the walls.

Then everything fell silent once more, save the distant dripping water.

‘Well, I can’t just stand around here. I’ve got to at least try and find a way out of here.’ With that he started off, walking across the wide chamber, toward the tunnels ahead of him. When he reached the tunnels – there were five – he stared into them for quite a time, trying to decide which to take. Seeing that it probably didn’t matter much – for they all looked dark and the same, and he didn’t have a specific direction in mind, just that he wanted out – he started into the middle.

He felt uncomfortable as he made his way into the pitch darkness, his only light the key Dauntilis had given to him. When he’d been a boy dark places such as this had absolutely terrified him, now, as a man, he wasn’t so much terrified, but there was still real fear there, and he wasn’t especially keen on this place. Who knew what could be lurking down here. Still, he didn’t have much choice. He needed to find some way out, or he’d surely die down here.

The tunnel behind him suddenly brightened considerably, and Nell spun around, holding his key forward, realizing, as he did it, how silly a thing it was. The key wasn’t a weapon!

The light from a floating, glowing orb reflected in Nell’s eyes, and a calming sensation washed over him. The orb made the mournful tone, like in the forest, and then rushed past his head, floating quickly down the tunnel. Nell spun on his heel and raced after the thing.

‘Wait! Wait!’ he called.

On and on the glowing orb journeyed down the tunnel, with Nell hastening along after it. He wasn’t even sure if he was doing the right thing, but it seemed right – after all, from what Dauntilis had said, these glowing orbs were who Nell was supposed to be looking for.

The cave widened ahead, and Nell followed the glowing orb out into a huge chamber. Before him lay a massive underground lake. The water was dark and placid, and out in the centre of the lake – Nell could see it because the orb he’d been following had soared up toward the ceiling illuminating the massive chamber almost completely – was a small island; little more than a rock, with a stone platform, and atop it was a lone, sleek archway; also made of stone. It looked ancient and had some crack in it.

Odd how it is just standing there, all by itself, Nell thought.

‘Where am I?’ he whispered. ‘What is this place!’ he called up toward the glowing orb.

His voice echoed and then drifted away, and all that answered him back was silence.

The orb, high above the lake, glowed brighter than before and then started to descend toward the archway, leaving a glowing – almost like an imprint of itself behind, which continued to light the chamber. When the glowing orb reached the archway, it orbited it twice and then, suddenly, a swirling cloud of blue light filled the arch. A moment passed; then, one by one, moving quickly, fifteen more orbs appeared, flying out of the glowing cloud in the archway. Then the cloud dissipated as the fifteen glowing orbs floated above the first orb, and hovered in a circle above it.

The new orbs were a fair bit larger than the first, and glowed a little brighter.

Nothing happened for a moment, but then, all fifteen orbs glowed brightly and a loud voice that shook the cavern spoke, saying, ‘Nell… join us!’

The voice echoed into nothing and Nell stared in wonder, blinking and trembling.

Then there was a new rumbling, and Nell’s eyes were drawn to the water as a straight and narrow stone path rose up out of it, and spanned the lake, from where Nell was standing, all the way to the stone. For a moment, Nell stared at the narrow path, and wondered what he should do.

He quickly remembered Dauntilis’s words, and the bargain that Nell’s Father had struck – and that there would be consciences if he didn’t go through with… whatever it was he was supposed to go through with.

Forcing himself to be more courageous than he was, Nell placed a foot on the damp stone path and started to make his way across the lake to the island. It took him less time than he would have originally thought, and before long he was placing a foot on the rocky island. He followed a rough-hewn path up, to stand before the archway and stared at the sleek outer ribs and the grey surface.

Nell turned his eyes upward to the sixteen glowing orbs.

Fifteen glowed brilliantly again, and the loud, echoing voice spoke once more, saying, ‘You have come at the allotted time…’

‘You’re the ones Dauntilis spoke of?’

‘Yes…’ the fifteen said.

‘You want me to do something?’ Nell asked.

‘We need you to do something,’ the fifteen responded, their voice correcting.

‘I’m a simple man,’ Nell offered, holding his arms out, ‘what good could I possibly be to you?’

‘You underestimate yourself,’ the fifteen countered, ‘you were chosen before you were born. The power of your family line is tremendous. You have it, your Brothers have it, your Sister has it. Weaknesses you have plenty, Nell Sorrow, but your heart is stout… You can do what needs to be done, and beyond that… your powers are there… you will use them.’

Nell couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Chosen before I was born…’ he whispered, overwhelmed. ‘But Dauntilis said-’

‘Hear us and heed,’ the fifteen told Nell sternly, ‘we are from an alternate Universe, and in that place, we were once as you, granted, by the Divine, bodies of flesh and bone… Our kind became corrupted, and we turned from truth. We sought greater power, and, in our infinite wisdom, it was our belief that a non-corporeal body was superior to that of flesh and bone. We changed ourselves, finding out too late how wrong we were.

‘Our people split, some - from the cast you now see - choosing to spend the rest of our existence striving to do good, in atonement for our selfish evil. Others chose to follow a path of darkness and evil, using what few advantages this new existence gave them, for coercion, control, cruelty, darkness, and evil… You have faced our Brothers and Sisters too.’

Nell felt a chill run up and down his spine. ‘Those smoky things, the ones that-’

‘Wanted the key,’ the fifteen agreed. ‘Long they have tried to find us, long we have hidden… Now everything has changed.’

‘But what does this have to do with me?’ Nell asked.

‘Prideful beings rarely learn their lessons quickly, and some from our Combine of Light - after we fled to this Universe from our tormented and dying realm - felt we must destroy our evil Brothers, and so we set out to do that. We found quickly that they were more powerful, and lost many in our war. Some of our kind sought desperate means to strike back, and a slaughter followed… For a time it looked as though we had won… but we had not. Our Brothers, intent on seeing us destroyed one way or another, made a pact with evil. Seeking the stars for dark powers, they created a weapon…

‘A weapon I say, for what it released nearly destroyed this Universe, as it destroyed ours. Even now this realm is dying… Because of our actions our Brothers created the Hell Gate - the weapon - and opened a way for Ishkaluuad, the Olden Soul, to invade this realm… the Shatter Wars… they were our fault… and if you don’t help us stop the Regol, what was ended ten years ago, will begin again, but worse… and fresh...

‘You see, the first time they opened to the wrong realm... now they’ve found what they are looking for; the place, the Demon they wanted to join with in the beginning... If they succeed in starting a new war, the Universe will surely fall as ours once did... There will be no chance for new life... it will be ruined, and left dead, dead, dead…’