As Penndarius slumped, his body stayed upright, held there by some strange force. His gaze was lifted toward the sky, his lips open in a silent scream as a line of pulsating green energy shot from both eyes and mouth.

Diametries's hand seemed locked onto the scholar's lapel, and he slumped forward on his feet but remained standing. His eyes closed, and he seemed to fall into a deep, meditative state.

The stunning blow Jadice had delivered to Soren was wearing off, and he became more and more enraged by the moment. Daymion was still smiling slyly at Soren, silently egging him on. The guards trying to restrain him could hold him no more, and the crimson warrior suddenly roared at his brother and pulled against his bindings, snapping them with a surprising burst of strength.

When the ropes broke, a sharp sound rang out like a bell. Soren used the momentum from the snap to throw a hammer fist into the sternum of both guards, which caused them to skid backwards along the rich carpet until they hit the wall behind them and began to slide toward the ground. Jadice grabbed them mid-fall and helped them to regain their balance.

The crimson warrior charged at his brother, and Daymion smirked as he dodged several brutal attacks. "I know your deepest and darkest fears,” he taunted. “I know that every night you go to sleep and dream about the night she died!”

Soren’s attacks became more and more frantic as he tried to connect with his brother.

With each attempt, he fell deeper into his rage.

“I know that every time you envision her in your arms, that feeling of helplessness pushes you deeper. You cannot stop me from killing this one either, Deartháir, just like you could not save her," Daymion continued, egging his brother on.

The words were a poison infecting Soren, and he felt the dream begin to overtake him as his unrestrained anger took charge.

"After all these years, do you still think you can escape your past? " Daymion hissed. “It controls you! “Yes! Let it take you!”

The last remnants of conscious thought left Soren’s mind. The cool, precise warrior disappeared and was replaced completely by an undisciplined beast. Soren slashed at Daymion with open hands, as if he were trying to maul him with invisible claws.

Daymion chuckled as he danced and ducked under Soren's attacks to push Soren over the brink of madness. "Ever have you followed in my steps, brother. Everywhere I go, I leave breadcrumbs for you to follow, and always you fail to stop us. Once again you lose, and another will die."

Halfway through one of Soren's attacks, Daymion drew dangerously close. "Do you remember holding her cold, lifeless body in your arms? Her death was your fault, Deartháir," he whispered, driving the final nail into a coffin of cruelty.

Soren fell to his knees and grabbed his head. He screamed in emotional anguish, then went quiet. When he looked up, his eyes opened wide, and tears of agony flowed down his cheeks. His mouth flared open to reveal canine teeth that were wicked-looking little fangs. Soren was gone.

Penndarius found himself in familiar surroundings. He was in the open, flat, gray plane again. Soothing monotone clouds decorated the horizon. He felt a presence at his side, looked over, and saw a majestic, white-furred creature from the strange incident in Ed's tower. It was Rhea.

The events from the past came flooding to the fore. "Where are we?" he asked.

Rhea shook her head in apology. "Not now, my dear," she said. "Feel the air quiver with the coming storm. They are almost here."

The scholar felt the slight pang of pain in his head as he turned, and then he noticed a swath of evil enter the realm around him and muddy it, as if the perversion were a stain on the pristine serenity of the flat land. Roiling clouds of indigo that emitted cobalt lightening blighted the peaceful gray sky, and their chaotic presence was mirrored perfectly on the ground.

Malicious alien intent reached out almost tangibly to make itself known through resonating vibrations in the air. The pain in the scholar's head steadily worsened as the intrusion became more visible.

In the invading gloom, Penndarius and Rhea watched as two figures appeared from afar. They walked inexorably toward the pair and seemed to vanish several times, only to reappear closer instantly until they were in front of them.

It was Diametries, accompanied by a creature unknown to Penndarius. In this place they were separate entities.

The creature reached up and scratched a deep line into a seeping wound where a wing had been long ago. The other wing seemed still to be intact. He rolled his eyes upward in ecstasy as the pain filtered into his consciousness. "Yesss...," he said to himself with masochistic delight.

Rhea wrinkled her nose as if a putrid smell had entered the air around her. "Kestrel, it is such a..." She paused, as the words themselves seemed to corrupt the air around her, and then continued. "...a pleasure."

"Salutations to the one of the great betrayers. Rhea, it is so wonderful to see you. My claws are aching to repay the debt they owe you from when last we met," Kestrel asserted and then laughed sardonically as his eyes glinted with danger. He flexed his long, sharp, deep blue claws to accentuate his meaning.

"What is he?" Penndarius asked as he examined the creature before him.

"I regret to say that he is one of my kind," Rhea said with obvious distaste.

Diametries drew his hand diagonally across the air with disdain. "The history lesson is over," he interrupted. "Erase their essences, and be done with it, creature," he commanded coldly.

“I tire of this banter.”

"Aye, my lord...with pleasure," Kestrel said as he grinned with excitement and began to crawl toward Penndarius and Rhea.

Rhea moved in front of Penndarius. "I will not allow this boy to come to harm," she said, and her action surprised the scholar.

Kestrel sneered. "What reasons do you—ah, I see...a contract. You slipped up, didn’t you?” he asked, and his eyes betrayed his interest. “How surprising.”

"Come forward as you will," Rhea said as she took up a protective stance, and a white barrier lined with a tinge of green formed in front of her and Penndarius.

"Aye, I will!" Kestrel roared in delight to the molten gold-and-azure sky and then bounded toward Rhea and clawed at her barrier with his hand. The attack left deep, jagged blue lines in her wall of defense, deep crevices that burned with residual sapphire-colored fire.

Rhea fought back with sweeping waves of her white-furred hands that sent shockwaves rippling along the pale ground.

As the two vaedziur met in battle, the pain in Penndarius's head went from noticeable to debilitating and brought him to his knees, like a knife plunging through his temples and being twisted back and forth.

With maniacal laugher, Kestrel continued to hack and slash at random while Rhea dodged from left to right, throwing up her barrier to block his attacks. Whenever she could, she retaliated, but it became apparent that Kestrel was more than able to match her in combat, and more jagged lines appeared as he cut her barrier to ribbons.

Diametries smiled as he watched the fight unfold. "It will not be much longer," he asserted with deathly calm.

Expelling a cry, Rhea threw a punch, slamming Kestrel backwards with a powerful wave of emerald-hued energy. Kestrel skidded along the ground, digging one of his clawed hands into the gray surface and leaving swaths of indigo fire in his wake. Then he rebounded to continue his assault.

The hacking and throbbing lacerated Penndarius's mind repeatedly and seemed to increase in intensity.

“This is taking too long,” Diametries said with disgust. He raised his hands, and a golden glow emanated from the tips of his fingers. Five golden threads of energy extended from the Speaker’s hand, lashing out at Rhea and slamming into her.

Rhea saw the attack coming and had to cross her white arms protectively across her body.

She was instantly forced on the defense.

Kestrel pressed his advantage and pounced on her, slashing against her barrier. All the while he laughed maniacally as he kept her backpedaling.

Rhea was unable to retaliate against either opponent through the continuous onslaught and was continually forced back. She turned her head toward Penndarius in agony as she struggled.

"I cannot hold!" she yelled frantically. "I need you, Penndarius!"

The story of Deiyalia's white stone capital is a strange one. The city was discovered generations upon generations ago by explorers from the outer edges of Therra. They found a large walled structure that was paved flat with smooth white stone, with a rather odd tower made of a strange metallic substance at its center. Roots made from stone, but shaped like a tree’s, seemed to extend into the ground from a tall trunk that reached far into the sky, as if the creators had coaxed the foundations from the soil itself. Yet, despite its strange outward appearance, the inside was remarkably functional, with rooms and stairwells that accommodate our therran size perfectly. I often wonder what mysteries this tower holds and what grim event caused the makers of its ivory walls to vanish in the bleak twilight.

- Gale Southtale, assistant researcher of the Helkrif excavation team

Inside the tower room, gold, blue, and green-tinged energy pulsated and extended from both Penndarius and Diametries. It flickered erratically as the colors mixed and separated again. The outline behind Diametries changed, and a hazy, cobalt-colored, single-winged shadow extended from him like a vision of his inner self.

As this battle raged, the head assassin and his warrior brother continued their more visible conflict. In the midst of the fray, the observing twins could not see the real extent of the internal battle that was occurring between the forces on the gray plane, but they could see the physical battle between the recently reunited brothers. Aedan and Jadice watched with consternation as they tried to decide what to do.

"What measures shall we take, brother?" Jadice asked quietly.

"That is beyond us," Aedan replied, motioning toward the two warring conjurers.

“But this is not," Jadice said, pointing toward the strictly physical conflict between Soren and Daymion. “This fight is getting out of control. We need to break this up, or it is going to spread to the rest of the keep.”

Jadice nodded. “Aye.”

"And like it or not, our Speaker’s new helper is as involved in this as Soren and

Penndarius. We must detain him for questioning. Come, brother!"

“What about the Speaker?” Jadice asked warily. “I do not wish to supersede the authority of the Order of Dol’ron.”

“My duty to Dol’ron’s authority is a courtesy exercised by my participation in the White

Guard,” Aedan assured him. “My first allegiance is to this city, and the courtesy extended to Diametries went out the damned window when the Speaker sent assassins to kill an unarmed scholar!”

“We do not know that....”

“The nine hells, we don’t! Those cloaked men that Soren defeated were well equipped to inflict death, and they wore the same broaches that this one bears. Did you hear any mention of Soren when Diametries commanded us seek the scholar?” Aedan asked.

Jadice remained silent.

Aedan continued, “I suspect he was the assassin’s real target, not Soren.” He spat angrily and then stomped towards the fight across the room. “I have a job to do, and if that puts me at odds with Dol’ron’s will, so be it. Fight or don’t, I am taking both down, with or without your help.”

Jadice swallowed the words that were boiling to the surface, but he could not deny his brother’s logic. Something was incredibly wrong here, and it screamed against everything Jadice believed in. The speaker was the messenger of his god, but hunting down and attacking a young scholar who was by all accounts innocent went against all the teachings.

He swallowed his misgivings and drew his great sword from its sling holster as he studied the ongoing battle. Aedan had preceded him with daggers in hand and turned to yell, "Stay back!

We will handle this!” to the two remaining guards as he and his brother entered the skirmish.

Soren was still yelling at the top of his lungs and had lost all control. His normally calculated and precise fighting style had degenerated into unrestrained, animalistic rage. He was swinging left and right with his hands angled downward like claws, flailing away with powerful strokes that failed to hit home.

Meanwhile, Daymion was performing in exactly the opposite manner. He was calm and controlled, and his eyes were focused purely on his brother and the fight. Every time Soren made a stroke, Daymion moved just out of reach and then came back in quickly with a short jab to the face or midsection. Then he would pull back and come at his brother from another direction. He was slowly leading Soren through the room in a circle.

Jadice cut a powerful vertical slice between the two combatants, which he aimed at Daymion. Aedan ran ahead and created a path in front of Jadice, then headed toward Soren and supplanted Daymion as the primary combatant for the enraged fighter.

"Mind if I cut in?" he asked, striking Soren's face with the crossguard of his dagger.

Daymion turned on Jadice, and for the first time his anger started to show through his contained demeanor. "This is not your fight, guardsman! Get out of my way!“ he said with cold rage at the unwanted interjection.

The bulkier twin responded with actions instead of words, making a powerful diagonal slice with the back of his blade, intended to disable rather than cleave. Daymion moved nimbly out of the way.

"Aren't you even a bit curious about what is going on over there?" Daymion asked Jadice, trying to draw the twin's attention from the physical fight at hand to the supernatural one farther away.

Jadice glowered and shook his head.

“And what of our dear Speaker? What will he think of your little intrusion?” the assassin asked manipulatively.

Jadice hesitated for a moment and then renewed his assault. The assassin laughed, and their fight continued.

Soren was beyond reason, attacking whomever was closest, which at that moment was Aedan. His strikes were wild and erratic. They lacked purpose beyond killing, and Aedan dodged every attack deftly.

- End of Episode -

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New Episodes of A Scholar's Journey: The Divine Tempest are released every Wednesday at 7AM PST.