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Chapter 48 - Empty Isle

The axe glinted in the crystalline air of Usnach.  Pylos had depleted his stores of fortitude and desire to fight; he laid himself open to the cold hand of fate.  He had given up.  Hope was gone.  Death and ruin were all that were left on the island.  The Myr would fall.

          Pylos realised there were so many things he had never done in his life.  He had never held a baby in his arms.  He had never read a book, or gone fishing.  Pylos’ life had been little more than a series of military exercises designed to improve his prowess on the battlefield.  He had never experienced the ordinariness of just being.  He had never got out of bed in the morning and got back in because it was too cold.  He had never stopped to watch clouds drift over a meadow.  He had heard tales of travellers climbing the Skyfall, but had never considered doing it himself.  Here – at the end of his life – he measured what he had achieved personally and found himself wanting.  He had protected life but not actually lived it.

          It angered him that in the moments before a Kobold’s axe fell, he should realise such a thing.  His mind shifted from its tragic reverie and he focused upon the eyes of his executioner.  

          Strangely, the eyes held no malice in them, only sadness.  The bottom lids were quivering almost imperceptibly and to Pylos’ surprise, tears were slowly welling up inside them.  

          And then the axe was swung.  It swept high over Pylos’ body and buried itself in the face of Caliban’s loyal lieutenant.  Lucetious’ head split open like rotten fruit.

          Pylos looked up to find that the Kobold was not alone in his act of rebellion.  All across the battlefield, Kobolds swung their shatterstone axes at the Ghul.  Though there were many more Ghul than Kobolds, they had no defence against the shatterstone weapons and the Empty Isle quickly became ablaze in the fiery explosions of Caliban’s army.

          As more and more Ghul fell, the confidence of the Pryderi – no longer led by Arinna Brine – faltered and before long the sun appeared above the island, released from the prison the witches had set around it.  As thousands of Ghul burned in the warm sunshine, Pylos could not remember a brighter day.

 

 

The battle had been won.  The Pryderi offered no resistance as they were rounded up and bound in chains.

         There was only one who continued to fight.  It was Lokasenna Hagen.  She fought furiously, even though the Ghul were all gone and the Cabal all but destroyed.  She stabbed and slashed at the Sessymirians who endeavoured to take her alive, but exhaustion got the better of her and she fell to the bloodstained ice in a heap.  From this defeated position, she continued to hurl obscenities at the Myrran troops, but no-one responded.  In light of the wounds they had sustained and the screams that had filled their ears that day, the sound of empty words was almost like music to their ears.

          ‘Do not look upon me with such pity, Pylos.’

          ‘I know who you are.  I do not blame you for fighting for your father.’

          Lokasenna sneered.  ‘Then blame me for killing Will Stoops!  Blame me for killing Sir Edgar Worseley!  Why, I even had a hand in the Mabbit’s death!’

          ‘Yes and you will be held accountable for your crimes.’

          ‘Then kill me now!’ she screamed.

          ‘Look around you Lokasenna.  The blood lies so thick on the ground, nothing is white anymore.  I think we have had enough of killing for one day.’

          He turned away and left her lying amidst the ruins of war where she wept until the sun disappeared behind the misty horizon and darkness descended upon the land.