Still, she could pick up her pace on the level ground, and so reach her companions that much sooner. Finarra drew out the long-bladed sword that had once belonged to her father, Hust Henarald. It was a silent weapon, predating the Awakening, water-etched and a known breaker. Serpentine patterns flowed up the length of the blade, coiling at the hilt. Off to her left the Vitr Sea was an ethereal glow and she could see its play on the polished iron of the sword.

Finarra swung inland, threading past the rotted boulders until she reached the verge of the plain. She eyed the wall of black grasses off to her right. There were darker gaps in it, marking some of the hidden paths forged by the beasts dwelling in Glimmer Fate. Many were small, used by deer-like animals the Wardens saw but rarely, and even then as little more than a flash of scaled hide, a blur of a serrated back and a high, slithering tail. Other gaps could easily accommodate a horse, and these belonged to the tusked heghest, a kind of reptilian boar, massive and ill-tempered; but the passage of these beasts through the high grasses eschewed stealth and she would hear any approach from some distance. Nor could a heghest outrun a mounted Warden: the animals were quick to tire, or perhaps lose interest. Their only enemy was the wolves, evinced by the occasional carcass found on the plain, in trampled clearings drenched in blood and torn pieces of hide.

She recalled once hearing such a battle in the distance, the keening, ear-hurting cries of the wolves and the heavy, enraged bellowing of the heghest brought to bay. Such memories were unwelcome and she kept her eyes upon that uneven wall of grasses as she padded along.

Overhead, the swirling pattern of the stars slowly appeared, like a spray of Vitr. Legends spoke of a time before such stars; when the vault of night was absolute and not even the sun dared open its lone eye. Stone and earth were, in that time, nothing more than solid manifestations of Darkness, the elemental force transformed into something that could be grasped, held cupped in the palm, sifting down through the fingers. If earth and stone held life back then, they were little more than promises of potential.

Those promises had but awaited the kiss of Chaos, as a spark of enlivening, and as a force in opposition. Entwined with the imposition of order that was implicit in Darkness, Chaos began the war that was life. The sun opened its eye and so slashed in two all existence, dividing the worldly realm into Light and Dark – and they too warred with one another, reflecting the struggle of life itself.

In such wars was carved the face of time. Birth is born and death ends. So wrote the ancients, in the ashes of the First Days.