Elphadon sat ragged in the wagon as the rain thumped against the tarp shielding himself and the others. He was the fifth of four prisoners.

  Duron; an Orkish man from the far easts of Tluu'mol, renowned for his finesse in bardic performances, accused of battering a heckler to death.

  Flencia; an Icecrown woman born in the hinterlands of Bavthest, a novice tribute to the Swordhermits, convicted of decapitating an orphanage mistress in cold blood.

  Luci; an Eaglecrest woman, an expert in alchemical knowledge, poisoned five high-ranking officials.

  Lastly was Simon. He was a Deuskethian human, one of many near identical humans across the continent, but there was an unmistakable air of wrongness about him. His teeth were too sharp for a docile human, his fingers glided across surfaces like a spiders legs, and those eyes, even if for a second, flashed with the hatred of mankind. Though he looked meeker and lesser than the rest, he was the only one whose hands were bound.

  Elphadon didn't know what Simon was arrested for.

  None of it mattered now, Only the Arcanes know whether they will be dead or imprisoned by the time this carriage reaches its destination.

  Duron suddenly thrashed against the iron bars of the carriage, attempting to fling the tarp away to get a better view of the road.

  "Confound it all! I get accused of murder and you don't have the decency to let me look upon my homelands full beauty one last time? What a joke!"

  The guard slammed the butt of his spear at the iron cage doors, "Shut up back there. Be grateful we even gave you the luxury of seeing the glimpse of land before delivering you."

  Simon smiled wryly "Come now, Duron. If it was only accused you wouldn't be here with us."

  Flencia kneeled, facing window. Her hair swayed with the wind as she practiced a Swordhermit mantra -Loo ker Usnan bo theel-, "My teeth are my blade," was all Elphadon could understand from it.

  "Oh don't you start Deuskethian bastard. Temple of Raathnu, preserve me against whatever demons possess you and your people. Your escapades reached me, on the other side of the continent! You were the one behind those murders, and the incident with that ship!"

  Luci perked up. In her hands were a bundle of herbs colored purple and red.

  Simon snapped "What happened on the ship was not my fault-"

  "Not your fault? Not your fault! You just happened to be the only survivor of an exploding ship! Oh, oh, and get this, you not only happen to survive but your imaginary archnemesis was who actually did it! Give me a break, Stormthorne."

  Luci hesitantly raised her head, shifting between her plants and the argument, before hesitantly replying "W-w-well if he was a mu-murderer... w-which I don't think he is... h-he is doing it for a good cause!"

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  Duron shot her a look which caused her to fix her head to the palm of her hands.

  "Luci, darling, you don't need to defend me." Simon responded, gesturing her to calm down, which she followed. "The trial transcript was rigged against me I can't blame him for not knowing the truth."

  Duron wailed "Oh you, you, you. Its always rigged with you isn't it! You cannot fathom, even if just for a second that maybe, just MAYBE its all YOUR FAULT. Maybe your lazy, idle buffoonery caught up with you!"

  Thunder shook the sky, the carriage jostled to a slower pace, and the moonlight had come to be veiled by more storm clouds. They were no doubt near a check point.

  Simon's smile was still decorating his face, but it was now stretched to a near impossibility, as though an inhumane creature attempted to draw human expressions knowing not what it was.

  "I'll humor you then, Duron. Tell me what my life must have been like. Who am I?"

  The Ork snickered. "You are a Zymius bastard whose power went to his head, you find an 'agenda' in everything you do, you never, for a day in your life, struggled for your position. You don't know what its like to be on the ground and fight for survival, not pride."

  Luci's head was bowed closer to her chest, and she clutched the contents of her hands ever tighter.

  "Never struggled? Ah, that must be right. I am a Zymius, I was born with a golden spoon in my mouth. Yes I can remember it fondly, swaddled in excess and decor yet frivolous with both.

  Yet I never managed to catch the name of my father before the gallows claimed him, perhaps I was distracted by a particular opal on the foot of my bed?

  And I suppose my mother fed us corpses of corpses of rats as hobby? She gnawed on marrow so her son can eat what little diseased flesh it had, not to endure, but to live? To live in pride?"

  Duron's jaw was slightly agape, he looked as though trying to resist guilt, but a cushion was sat below his chin.

  "A tragedy... however you still sit in your perch in the heavens. Your arcane power elevated you from peasant child to a wolf among sheep, you cannot see the world from the same lens as your child self. I'd even dare say that makes you even more reckless in power, for it was withheld from you for far too long."

  Simon slumped down, perpendicular to Flencia. Her mantra stopped, and she looked at Simon through her peripheral.

  "I don't have any arcane ability. Never have, never will. My survival all these years was at my own hands. Not the gods, not fate, and certainly not magic."

  Duron's eyes keened. Almost as though he relieved in knowing a man was competing with angels and still matched their pace, however, he came quickly to his senses. The Ork spat dismissively, getting up from the carriage door, taking refuge in a damp corner in the cage.

  The group simply sat in silence as the carriage came to a frigid halt. A gathering of two hundred men began to rustle and clamber outside the carriage, Elphadon could not tell each man apart from their shadow, but had the clattering of spears and swords been anything to go by, they were eager to be rid of the prisoners.

  Suddenly, the tarp was ripped off the carriage, and a balding man -- muscular and well-fleshed, though closer to a large, bulbous infant than a man -- tore open the carriage gates. He was the general of this Battalion. Behind him was a wave of soldiers, each a different species, and a different race from within that species, yet even so their armor bore the emblem of the Do'rmuul clergy, and beyond them was a trail lasting further than the eye could see, surronded by fields golden in wheat and grey of stone.

  The prisoners themselves where at a large stone bridge, surrounded by oceans and the jagged clifffaces,

  "Get out!" the general said, raising a wide fist to the mounting platform dangling off the side of the bridge, where five nooses hung over the thrashing waters.

  Flencia was the first to exit the carriage, calmly and gracefully, never even opening her eyes as she delicately glided down the pokkan wood steps, she passed the carriage and went to the platform. Then went Luci, who held Simons hands for but a moment before leaving, and standing besides Flencia, clinging to her desperately. Elphadon himself was next, stumbling down the carriage steps and next to Luci. He held his head high and prayed that if there was a divine miracle soon to come, to be sooner than his death.