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feared Maribor's vast armies and witchcraft. The Avenar Princeslocked themselves in the DawnHold, extending their senses to scour the world for Taelan Muntalabac. They failed for twenty long years as Andaur and the Dread Lord crept ever closer to open war.

  Uninterested in the fears and events of the world outside Winter's Gates, Maevos Avenar grew up in the protective folds of the Borluce society. As the years passed, they woke slumbering pieces of his mind and taught him how to speak with only his thoughts. As he aged, he learned of the Weshac and met the Northern men. His blood could not be denied, though, a geis lay upon his family, and the call to return south grew stronger with every passing year. Thus, when he reached twenty winters of age, he left his foster family and traveled to the lands of northern men where he heard of Andaur, Maribor, and Taelan Muntalabac. So, with war brewing on every horizon, he joined the Ranger-Wardens of The North to learn the art of war.

  Five years passed with tension along the borders growing heavier as the legions of both factions coalesced on either side of the Annuir'Hyme. Then, as winter came, Taelan Muntalabac deemed his brood fully matured. He approached the Maribor Andaar, intent on igniting a war with the West that would conclude with the burning of the DawnHold. He found the latest Andaar king bloated on the blood that was his diet and frothing at the mouth in his lust for war. Furthermore, he found an unexpected messenger: a wizard sent to Antiark many decades before. The messenger bore tidings of a man among the Ranger-Wardens who appeared to be of western descent. Taelan Muntalabac doubted at first until a premonition slipped into his mind. Suddenly wary, he split the wizard's cranium, tore out and consumed the brain matter it held. In the wizard's memories, he found the westerner and knew him to be Maevos Avenar, the last Prince of the Avenar Bloodline destined to end him. Unleashing a cry of limitless wroth, he turned on Maribor, devouring all light for miles around with shadows darker than anything the Mad King held in his black heart. When he spoke, his words brought black ice to the walls, cracked iron and shattered glass. He called Maribor to assault The North, warning that it would join the West in the coming war for fear of being conquered in turn. Maribor resisted him, asking how they would breech Winter's Gate. Taelan Muntalabac grinned saying that they would not need to. Reclining back into the Skull Throne, Maribor Andaar echoed his grin and acquiesced; and thus all The North, East and West were hurled into war.

  Maribor Andaar gave Taelan Muntalabac a hundred thousand soldiers and fifteen hundred Iron Witches atop their bestial four winged steeds. Taking this host, the Dread Lord marched to the furthest northern reaches of Andaur until he stood at very roots of the Rhawn Mountains. There, he tore a rift in the world, opening a way into The North, and entered as the first conqueror to breech Winter's Gate in millennium. Meanwhile, Maribor commenced his war on the West. The skies broke with his bloody rain, and the ground died beneath the black mist of Andaur as Maribor's Iron Witches lead his legions across the Annuir'Hyme on bridges of Witchcraft. Lead by the Avenar Princes, the western legions opposed them in a blood bath that turned the Annuir'Hyme red. Wizardry, Prayercraft, and Magecraft clashed with Witchcraft across the heavens in a storm of fire and devastation that turned all of the surrounding countryside into rubble and ash.

  As this war commenced, Tiberius Wyite called Elaya Avenar, Maevos's surviving sister, to Apelium. She answered without hesitation, arriving at the ancient gates before a Turning had passed. Tiberius Wyite spoke to her swiftly, warning that The North would have need of her, and that she would find her lost brother there. She demanded why he had not told her of his existence before, and he answered that Maevos had been safer in The North than in the DawnHold. Furious at his deception, she nonetheless departed northward, desperate to save her brother.

  Inside Winter's Gate, the war fared poorly for The North. They were ill prepared for an invasion behind their defenses, an invasion that put almost every northern soldier on the wrong side of Taelan Muntalabac's host as he marched on Dellak, third of the Northern cities. Men, however, were not The North's greatest weapon. The cold is, and it beset Taelan Muntalabac mercilessly. Men and animals died by the thousands, food spoiled, iron rusted and leather split. The Dread Lord never ceased his march; he did not care for the lives he wasted only for the death of Maevos Avenar. Finally, he reached Dellak where Maevos Avenar awaited his arrival. Howling, Taelan Muntalabac did not hesitate in throwing his legions at Dellak's walls the moment Maevos stepped out from concealment. Creatures other than men engaged his legions on the walls for Maevos had called Borluce and Weshac from the Deep North in this hour of desperation.

  For three days, the Dread Lord besieged Dellak, battering the walls from afar with siege engines in the day and assaulting them in the night. Then, as the fourth day dawned crimson in the heavens, the walls crumbled beneath his battery of witchcraft and siege engines. The Dread lord commanded this final assault. Andaur's legions swarmed to the breach where Maevos Avenar and the surviving defenders met them. Horns bellowed from the South nourishing hope and courage. The dawn flared brighter as Lord Adriat appeared with Elaya Avenar beside him.

  The Dread Lord unleashed a bestial howl of wroth and turned on the succoring host from Adriat, hurling before him a tide of darkness to envelope and devour every mortal soul that opposed him. Elaya Avenar stepped to the forefront, a small figure before a sea of darkness. Lifting Taychran, the Dawn Blade, she parted the dark sea, barring the besieging forces to Lord Adriat and his host. The Northern army fell upon Taelan Muntalabac with vengeful cries.

  His legions routing about him, the Dread Lord cut a swath of untold devastation through the Northern ranks. No one could defeat him, and any who tried joined the dead thousands in his wake. A light impeded his advance, though, as Elaya Avenar challenged Taelan Muntalabac. He rose before her, terrible to behold, a giant before a girl for all she was a woman grown. She struck without fear, piercing light into the suffocating darkness of his presence. Celestial steel clashed against divine stone as Taychran struck the shrieking crimson sword Taelan held. Looking upon them from a distance, Maevos Avenar remembered his heritage and, crying out in rage, charged forward shearing through the fell ranks with pure starlight.

  Elaya Avenar strove against Taelan Muntalabac with fire and steel, but he was ancient as the Age and far greater than she. There could be only one survivor. Thus, even as Maevos reached his sister, Elaya fell to the Dread Lord, her dying body cast aside with a laugh. Weeping, Maevos knelt beside his sister and held her as the last breath of her life fled. High overhead, the heavens sundered with the Dread Storm as Taelan Muntalabac, swollen on the death of an Avenar, approached Maevos.

  Looking up from the corpse of his sister, Maevos Avenar stared into the amassed evil of the Dread Lord. Taelan Muntalabac answered his stare with a grin, the skin of his body splitting from the swelling darkness he held within. He lifted his crimson blade high overhead, the dark stone flashing in the black lightning. The blade fell, hungry for another blessed life, only to meet Taychran's golden iron. Unleashing a mental wail of abject misery, Maevos Avenar retaliated. The Dread Lord staggered back, a livid injury opening his flesh from waist to brow that bled an essence darker than any night. Gathering himself, Taelan Muntalabac struck repeatedly, seeking to crush his foe through sheer power. Maevos Avenar turned every blow aside, stealing their impetus, amassing it for a single devastating onslaught. Then, as the war ended about them, Maevos plunged Taychran into the Dread Lord's breast. The Stone Blade fell to the earth spitting black fumes and darkening the ice as Taelan Muntalabac's soul fled the dying body.

  Maevos stood through long moments of despairing silence, staring out across the ruins of a battlefield. The dead of The North, the East, the Borluce, and the Weshac filled his vision further than any horizon. A burden weighed on his heart, the geis of his family, denying him the chance to mourn his sister. Thus taking up the cursed sword for safekeeping, he returned to Dellak and spoke with his allies. He called them to aide him, to march on the East and end the reign of the Mad Kings. On
ly the Weshac could aide him for the war had taken its toll on the northern soldiers, and the Borluce were forbidden by ancient words from going beyond Winter's Gate's. The Weshac, however, were more than enough for what he intended. For millennia, they had terrorized the eastern and western coasts, raiding the merchant vessels and coastal cities with impunity. They had no equals on the water, and of all races, they alone stood the best chance of achieving victory in Andaur's black mists. Therefore, a Turning later Maevos departed The North sailing the inhospitable northern ocean ahead of five hundred wolf-ships, each laden with sixty of the fiercest Weshac raiders.

  Along Andaur's border, the war fared ill for both sides. The western forces were losing the conflict; Maribor Andaar's forces too closely matched their own. After weeks of constantly assaulting Andaur from across the bellicose Annuir'Hyme, their morale and soldiers were dwindling. However, the cost of achieving victory in the war left vast swaths of Andaur unguarded, or rather, unfettered the inhabitants. Rebellion brewed in the empire’s corners and