The sun beat against Auberon’s skin as he crouched on the high rocky perch he found that overlooked the ritual site below. As far as the eye could see, men waited patiently for the seventeen augurs the King had charged with opening a gateway to Outworld. 

“I bet they all shagged last night,” a nearby voice commented. He looked over and regarded the young man next to him as he took a bite out of an apple. Behind him, his mount rested as it basked in the sunlight, much like Auberon’s own mount, Vetzsche, who rested behind him.

Auberon regarded his friend with a skeptical look. “Rost, does everything revolve around sex with you?”

Rost blinked at Auberon as though the answer were obvious. “I slept with an augur once the day before her communion. Rutted the girl for an entire night during a furlough. Insatiable,” he explained, then pointed to the Augurs kneeling below them, at the crest of the hill. “That lot there. They were front-to-end with each other all night long, I guarantee it.”

Auberon barked out a laugh, drawing the attention of some of the men perched alongside their mounts on the other outcroppings. They were other Empyrean Riders like themselves, the famed Riders of Raptor Company. Favoured by the Most High, King Othniel Caradoc of Embrayya.

“Well think of it, fool,” Rost said. “You spend your whole life locked up in a monastery, taught the intricacies of the Elder Law, preparing for the day a noble instructs you to give your very life in exchange for a miracle of some notion.”

“How is that any different than what we do?” Auberon asked. He placed a hand on the back of  Vetzsche’s neck and stroked it. His wyvern stretched for a moment, then nuzzled his snout into Auberon’s side.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Rost replied. “We come back victorious, or we come back dead. And then when we’re not fighting or flying, we’re fucking.” He pointed again to the augurs. “But at least we have the benefit of hope. Every last one of them down there know they’re going to die today. One’s already dead and gone. That Freia girl’s sister.”

“The Freia girl? Sizilen?” He knew of her in passing. There weren’t many women in the front lines besides Augurs.

“Aye, Sizilen. I’d have rutted her too, if she’d let me, but she’s too distracted by her sister dying and all.”

“Well how inconvenient for you,” Auberon said. “Remember who she is as of today. It doesn’t bode well for you to speak of a Matron like that.”

Rost threw a pebble at him. “She’s not a Matron yet. Besides, what I think hardly matters to her now anyway. She doesn’t speak much and General Borou’s always an arm’s length from her. She don’t carry herself like his consort, but I’m not so stupid as to take that risk now.”

“But yesterday was okay?”

“Yesterday she had a sister.” He nonchalantly took another bite of his apple.

Auberon looked down to the hilltop. The augurs were surrounding a sight that Auberon had never seen before. A miracle of the Elder Law, he supposed. A hole in the fabric of reality. One that reportedly led to the fabled Outworld.

Outworld was a myth, of course. Or so he’d thought by the time he was old enough to grasp the world around him. A legend. An excuse to justify the evils of the world. A story to scare children into obedience. It was both the source of all the ills life could offer, and the origin of the demons.

Auberon shuddered to think of it. His family, save for himself and his sister, were slaughtered by demons during the invasion of the Wasted Hordes. Their bodies used, then mutilated for their sick pleasures. Those demons were unlike those that hid among the forests, bogs and mountains of Embrayya. They were organized, fierce, and exceptionally cruel.

Watching the Empyrean Riders decimate the demon forces as a child drew him to follow in their paths. Auberon spent years honing his skills and eventually landed a spot alongside Rost in the Academy of Wings and was later appointed to Raptor Company, the very squadron that had saved his own life years prior.

As the myths went, when the Outworlders first came to Ayndir, they laid eyes upon its azure skies, gilded beaches and plentiful forests not with wonder and awe, but with envy. They coveted the lands, the seas and the skies for themselves and destroyed the people of Ayndir to a single man. Vaste’lon, the Great Dragon.

Vaste’lon fought with every inch of his soul, and pushed them back to the borders between the worlds and then cut down the great world tree that connected the lands together with a sword of light, reducing it to naught but ash and a single seed.

But while the Outworlders were pushed away… their horrors were left behind. The demons, the demi-races. Goblins, trolls and the night beasts. Suffering. Fear.

All that was ill in the world was said to fall upon the shoulders of the Outworlders.

But until two weeks ago, Auberon was convinced it was a myth. That’s when he learned that the seed of the great world tree existed-- not only existed, but sat in the hands of Othniel Caradoc himself.

And that he intended to use it.

Some would have thought him mad. Auberon himself wasn’t sure what to believe until he first saw the void he was now staring at. A hole in the fabric of reality that led to… another place.

So while Rost was considering the pubic proclivities of the young augurs below, Auberon could only think of his long-dead family, and stare into the void below him with silent purpose.

Outworld was real. He could see into it.

That meant Outworlders were real. Those that had unleashed the demons into his world. Those who had created the creatures that tore his family to shreds were just on the other side of that void. He no longer had to blame some formless god. He would be granted a chance to return the pain he’d received, tenfold, to the very progenitors of the demon races.

“Ho! There goes one,” Rost said. Below them, a robed augur had fallen face-first onto the ground. He watched as a soldier grabbed them and hauled them away, only to be replaced by another.

But something else was going on. Three augurs approached the void. Auberon stiffened. Something was about to happen.

One kneeled and placed a basket on the ground. She pulled back her hood and took something from the basket. It was too far to make it out, but Auberon assumed it had to have been the seed. The fabled lost treasure of Vaste’lon.

She held her hand aloft over the void, and then suddenly three other augurs dropped to the ground, the life drained out of them. Others moved in and the void started to… shimmer. It shimmered and shifted, and for the first time in his life, Auberon witnessed the waves of the Elder Law emanate forth from her hand.

The Twinning. She was twinning the seed. Making a duplicate. He could see the seed separate into two. Or rather, they were the same seed, that just existed in two different places, intricately entwined with one another. They split and hovered silently.

Even Rost stiffened and leaned forward, observing silently.

The two augurs to her side closed around her and the seed-bearer fell over. Auberon watched in wonder as they continued the ritual, holding the seed aloft and arranging it over the void.

Suddenly a flash of light and a sound the likes of which he’d never heard threatened to blow out his eardrums. Vetzsche reacted swiftly, pulling away from Auberon and spreading his wings, ready to take flight until Auberon calmed him.

“Easy,” he said. “Easy boy.” He looked back once his vision cleared. The void was gone. Bodies lay where they stood, still and lifeless, and the top of the hill itself lay splayed open, spilling dirt and clay everywhere.

“What happened?” Rost asked, reining in his own wyvern. “It didn’t work?”

Auberon started to feel a low rumble. His eyes darted to the other members of Raptor Company. They were mounting their wyverns and taking flight.

Auberon and Rost followed suit, mounting their wyverns and attaching their hook-latches to their saddles as they took off. The rumble was loud even from the sky, and Auberon ventured a glance below as Vetzsche began to fly further up. From the air, he could see the first sprouts of a tree begin to reach from the ground.

The World Tree. Auberon was witnessing the birth of a new World Tree. He hadn’t realized it would grow so.. Quickly. He’d never seen the like before as it reached up further into the sky, continuing to grow atop Mercer’s Mound. He and Rost put some distance between themselves and the growing tree, and took their wyverns down to land near their tents at the bottom of the mound. From there, they watched from below as the tree continued to grow at the top of the hill, growing higher even than the towering rocky outcroppings they’d just been perched on.

“Ho!” Rost exclaimed. “That’s a sight to tell the gods about!”

Auberon continued to watch in silence as the World Tree filled out. From where he was standing, he could make out a depression forming in its trunk. The gateway. It formed the gateway to Outworld. Eventually, it ceased growing, and a shimmer appeared in the trunk.

Auberon stared at it, speechless, for several moments before the nearby voice of General Borou rose.

“This is it men!” he exclaimed. “The beasts and denizens of Outworld will soon know the name of Othniel Caradoc, and we will not rest until they bow to him! First Order, attend!”

He was calling on the First Order. The initial invasion force. Auberon watched as two companies of Direwolf Cavalrymen began to run up the hill, followed by a company of archers. Raptor Company was part of the Second Order, meant to survey the area on the other side quickly and eliminate threats before the Third Order, the clerks and officers, passed through the Shimmer.

Auberon turned to Vetzsche. “Okay old boy,” he began placing a hand upon his snout. “You look out for me over there, and I’ll look out for you, okay? We’ll show the Outworlders what it means to be Embrayyan.”

Vetzsche responded with a snort, then nuzzled his snout into Auberon’s shoulder.

“Don’t give me that,” he warned. “You’re made of tougher stuff.” He patted Vetzsche lovingly, then turned around. The direwolves and their riders were through the Shimmer. The archers weren’t far behind.

“Raptor Company!” yelled Captain Edrie. “Attend!”

Auberon quickly climbed into the saddle and attached his hook-latches. A moment later, he turned Vetzsche to face their captain.

“Raptor Company! How do we get there?”

“As a column!” The entirety of Raptor Company responded.

“Raptor Company! How does the column break?”

“Left, right, center!”

“Raptor Company! Who do we cover?”

“We cover our center!”

“Raptor Company! For whom do we die?”

“For Embrayya!”

“Raptor Company! For whom do we kill?”

“For Caradoc!”

“Raptor Company! Attend!” Captain Edrie exclaimed. He turned toward General Borou. The archers were now passing through the shimmer.

“Raptor Company!” General Borou exclaimed. “Talon Company! Whirlwind Company! Second Order!”

With that, Auberon and Vetzsche took to the skies, leaving the Embrayyan earth beneath them. When next they landed, they would be in Outworld.