And as He raised His spear in triumph to strike the blow that would make all His, Sumeral’s gaze fell upon the face of this one, and eyes He had long forgotten stared fearfully but uncowed into His very soul.

And He faltered.

In that timeless moment, His protection fell from Him, and His breast was pierced by a true Fyordyn arrow forged with Ethriss’s skill. Then another and another and another, thick through the death-stained air like a cleaning summer storm. And with a great cry His mortal body fell, and turmoil reigned as His Uhriel, bereft of His will, fell before the Guardians, and the earth and sky and sea were torn from their grasp. So too were scattered His mortal armies.

But in His falling, two things He did. His mortal hand loosed the spear that struck down Ethriss, and His spirit shrank and vowed and learned and hid in the hearts of His most faithful until some future time would come. For He knew that His ways lay now deep in the hearts of all men, and that as surely as He now fell, so He must rise again in the fullness of time.

Even the gentle land of Orthlund cowered under that winter. The like had never been known in living memory. It seemed that almost every day there were dark clouds gathering in the north, like armies awaiting reinforcements. And when the howling winds brought them and their bloated burdens of snow relentlessly southward, the Orthlundyn were more than content to surrender their villages to the assault.

Content as they sat and talked and carved in the warmth of their homes, and were grateful for thick walls and stout roofs, and for the past summer that had given them a fine harvest and locked more than enough warm days into their flickering radiant stones to warm them through a dozen such winters.