It begins with fear. I am walking down an empty street. The light of the sun is harsh and foreign upon my skin. The buildings tower around me, reaching to the bowl of her womb, man-made erections attempting to pierce her majesty. The shine of silver and glass is blinding in this canyon of man.

I know the journey is not over yet, I am too alone for it to be done. I reach out with my gift and I can sense the presence of spirits all around me. They move angrily, hurrying around with no seeming purpose. Everything about them seems blurred, unlike most of the spirits who visit us from time to time, whose minds are clear and precise, who never give away their true purpose.

These spirits are weak shadows by comparison, but their numbers! There are far more than I can count, and I can’t hold one in my mind for more than a moment before it has moved on. I can feel them growing closer to me, pressing in around me as the veil grows thinner and thinner. I run, terrified that my mind will be crushed by their weight. I turn between two of the buildings and move down the pathway there. There are iron boxes there and I hide behind one, finally getting inside one, thinking perhaps that it would shield me.
There are far fewer spirits in this pathway, and the iron box begins to smell. The crossing truly growing near. I wrap myself in the thin cloak Tia had given me before the war and huddle in the box, waiting for the crossing to be complete. There is a lengthening of time, then a slowing. I can feel the world stretching around me and my body begins to tremor.

There is no light in the box, but I shut my eyes, trying to keep back the visions that begin to arise, to no avail. Tia, her round face upturned to the glowing light of the moon, streaks of auburn glowing firey red by the silver sparkles. Then her features twisted, becoming some sort of unnatural beast. Her body catching fire and charring as it convulses around itself until she has become a demon. She lunges at me and I turn, striking at her with the sword from my back. The wrought silver blade moves through her as though she wasn’t there, and she cries in terror.

Tia’s eyes look out at me from the grotesque visage before me, and its forelimbs curl towards me, claws sliding from their sheaths. It lunges again, and my body twists as it was trained. The sword comes neatly around and severs her head. It rolls upon the grass at my feet, amber skin basked in the moonlight. Her hair pooled at my feet. The blackened visage gone, as if it had never existed.

Now I am screaming, I know because I can hear nothing but my own voice, vibrating horribly in the metal box as the world loses it’s sense of reality. I am thrust into memory, and my fathers anger at my actions. His eyes turning cold as he look sat me, tears for Tia frozen in place upon his cheek as he banishes me to the wilderness.

“Father, my liege, no! The demons are coming, they are here! Tia became one, I swear to you!” My voice was hoarse from crying, and my own eyes dark and angry from grief and terror, their leaf-green hue almost black now. He shakes his head and the maiden of the way, my elder sister, looks at me with pity as she moves towards me.

“You no longer have a place in this realm prince. Your way has been barred. Leave now and you may find solace at the hearth of your kin. Her talent wraps around me, and I feel the way to this place pulled from my consciousness, the symbols torn from me. I rise to my feet, already feeling the court beginning to fade from my sight. I look at the maiden of the way, whose hands begin to move again, preparing to send me far from this place. Her eyes betray her glee, their purple starburst glittering with silver and gold.

I shake my head once and shatter her weaving before it has encompassed me. “I will make my own way dear sister.” She raises herself to her full height and I sense her reaching for the power of the court to carry out her duty. I smile and step sideways before she has done more than touch that power, and I am gone. I feel echos of her anger as I move, turning again and again until I come to a place in the wild, where the soft sun caresses my skin and fills my hair with it’s light.

I lay down on the shores of the great river, and let myself sink into the earth to rest, but there was no rest to be found. The river carried to me memories of the demons. It brought visions of what they would do to my people, what they were capable of. The river gave me new warning and bid me follow its course and I did. At her mouth the delta of land was dark and sickly. Nothing grew in the rich soil, and I could feel the power of the demons there. I rose upon wings and gazed down upon it, and could see the point of terror, the piercing of our world that let their horror spill forth. And as I watched they parted from the delta. Shadows slid across the earth, undaunted by the light of the sun.

I laid back into the river, to watch the motion of the shadows. Time was meaningless to me, and they spread through the land, bearing their poison to the far-thrown corners of my world. I experienced each feeling of hopelessness and despair again and again. Finally, when the war began I tried to fight the demons, but they were too many and too strong. I rose from the river, and saw the destruction so many realms had endured, and I knew only that I must do something.

I am as’thar, and my magic has grown stronger since I first earned that title. I called spirits to me, the spirits of the other world beyond the veil, and they called me to them. There was something in their thoughts, something they could not express or truly understand. But I saw in their magic the echoes of my own. More importantly, I saw the echoes of the evil that was pushing through my realm so quickly. Surely they must have some way of combating it that I could not know.

And so I began the crossing. I walked under the sun and moon, beneath the firmament for days on end, until from that far away delta I began to travel along a line of power, one as yet untouched by the plague. I cast the power up from the land, sending my sorrow to the keepers of the place that I could not be more gentle. I called upon Her majesty, upon the blooming life of the sun and the way opened before me. I walked towards the lake, I could smell it far away, and when I first saw it, gazing upon it from a hill I knew that I was near where my home would be, if the way were not closed to me. In the air above the lake were shadows of a city, buildings towering before me.

I walked too them and they grew slowly more distinct, until I walked into one and it’s wall had substance. I followed the black roadways towards the lake, drawn ever forward by the power I had summoned, until the world collapsed upon me, folding over and over in this box, hidden away from the world I was trying to enter.

I lived my life a hundred times in the space of that fold, and then there was nothing but blackness, and the cold wintry air of the city. Then the bustling noise of the spirits moving around, and the hollow thud of the box I sat in. I listened for the sun and shivered. Waiting patiently for the darkness to settle before venturing out into this strange new world.