Chapter 4

A young girl, dressed in a loose red top and tight red leather trousers, tucked into knee-high black leather boots, crouched in the ruins of the Temple of Dreams. Her dark eyes gazed down into the center pit, staring at the dead monstrosity, her eyes tracing the tentacles that led to the young man down there as her hand pushed a lock of black and red hair behind her ear.

The young man was dressed in a blue tunic and trousers, along with his own knee-high leather boots. He was crouched near the hole in the wall, examining it. There was a slight depression in the muck, and his eyes noted a trail of footprints in a few places clear of the water, prints he had carefully avoided disturbing. He followed them out, and was soon standing beside his sister. That close to her, and it was obvious they were twins. Gender differences aside, they looked remarkably similar, though the boy stood almost a foot taller than his sister and where her hair held streaks of red, his held streaks of blue. “The man that left the prints was here only yesterday.”

She nodded. “I agree. Saern has yet to return from checking the city, but I bet this has something to do with the necromancer people talk about in the mountains.”

“Likely our next step,” he agreed. “We should begin packing our camp up, and then prepare for a long walk Dai.”

Dai, the girl, snorted as she moved out of the Temple. “Not so long Dorn. It’s barely two days to those mountains.”

Meanwhile, in the city, Saern had found the rest of the footprints. Two sets, one leading in and one out. While the one leading out was direct, the one coming in meandered, moving down a side street and into a ruin before coming out and heading to the Temple, where he had left his protégés. As he walked back to the camp, he considered them both.

Dai was a rarity in the Ryu-Sincar. It was rare enough for them to admit a woman, rarer still to admit a person with her skills and personality, but they had wanted her brother Dornak, and where one walked, the other followed. The Ryu-Sincar knew, of course, that the twins of them were lovers, had been lovers for years, and despite their best efforts they had been unable to stop them, and so they looked the other way, because finding a pyrokinetic, a fire controller, of Dai’s strength was rare, but a hydrokinetic, a water controller, like her brother was nearly unheard of.

He ducked beneath a stone pillar sitting at an angle, resting against the partially collapsed house they were using for their campsite, noting their voices as he approached. They were talking about ordinary things, making crude jokes the way any nineteen year old twins might. His eyes took in the almost fully packed camp, most of the packs loaded onto their single mule. “I see you two have anticipated our departure.”

Dorn nodded. “The tracks in the ruined temple are barely a day old. The creature has lain there longer, but only by a few days.” Saern took the news in without comment as he pulled off his heavy sword belt and plain tunic, then flipped open a heavy pack. He stuffed the tunic into it, and pulled out a padded undershirt, which he slipped on. Over that he buckled on a steel cuirass then wrapped his sword belt around his waist once more. When he turned, he saw the twins following his lead. Dai had already pulled her loose top off, baring her small breasts, her nipples tight and hard either from the chill air or from simply being topless. Likewise, her brother was topless and working on untying his boots.

As Saern turned back to the pack containing his gear, Dai managed to get her boots off, and then peeled off her leather pants, wriggling her ass at her brother as she did so. He smiled in appreciation as he stripped off his own leather pants. His cock was half erect from the little teasing his sister had done, but Saern had laid down the law on this issue. The Ryu-Sincar did not allow incestuous couplings, and theirs was tolerated only because of their power. But only at night, in their tent or rooms, were they allowed to indulge.

Once both twins were re-dressed to match Saern, they buckled on their weapons. For Dai, a heavy dagger and sabre, while her brother carried a pair of wide-bladed long swords. Their armour, like Saern’s, was not enamelled and was unadorned, bearing no sigils or crests to show their loyalties. As the sun reached its zenith, they set out, moving through the ruined city towards the mountains on the far horizon.

By the time the sun set, all three were tired, and setting up a rudimentary camp beneath the same evergreen Arakel had rested in only the night before. The roads leading to and from the island, abandoned so long, could barely be said to exist at all, and it had proved easier to walk beside them than over them. According to Saern, a man well-versed in the campaigns of the Ryu-Sincar, the people of the island had been wealthy from nearly endless gem deposits in the mountains. This wealth had allowed them to pave their roads with massive stone blocks, instead of taking care of the poor, or working to exterminate the monsters in their so-called temple. The massive blocks used to pave the roads had broken up over the centuries, heaved upwards by the winter chill and rounded down by weather to create swathes of rock that were difficult to traverse.