That evening, after a long march through damp woodlands, Legion IX's column emerged onto a barren farmland. All stores had long since been pillaged and weeds grew in thickets about frail orchards. Hollow and blackened skeletons were all that remained of the suburbs–burned, trampled and otherwise dismantled for the Fifth Legion's encircling palisade walls. The southerly fields rose to the precipice of seaside cliffs, and collapsed out of sight upon the backdrop of the blue sea. And in the distance rose the walls of Nerithon.

The city's eastern-most walls began at a tower–a huge shield whose grey face melded with the cliff's edge. Atop it was a beacon, but the lighthouse was cold. Beyond the cliffs at its feet, Skippii saw the masts of a dozen ships. They bobbed like brown mallards with a red and white streak–colours of the Imperium. The blockade. Many more lay obscured behind the cliffs, but rumour was that none had managed to penetrate Nerithon's fortified harbour.

The harbour itself was hidden from sight, but above it, a disparate flock of seagulls circled. However, they were outnumbered by their black brethren: the crow. Carrion gathered like mites upon the lighthouse, and the many towers of the adjoining wall. Those grey-rock battlements stretched westward for one mile. Grey and hard, the wall faced the Fifth Legion's encampment with a cold overshadowing scorn. There was no weakness in its design that Skippii could see. It was built by Philoxenian hands with Auctorian mason-masters in the days of old. Now, its rock was blemished with scraps of brownish-red hides–the crude banners of the enemy.

The walls dipped slightly with the landscape then took a sharp turn north, flying straight past the foothills of a lonely mountain. There, lush forests crept forward to meet the walls, and a union of masonry and the wilds was met. Like a green lake, the flourishing forest swept up the hillside, foaming at the mountain's apex, only to fizzle out before its flat peak. There, a bald, black rock formed its zenith, cast in unflinching shadow. There was no weakness in their design that Skippii could see.

His eyes lingered on that peak as a trickle of excitement joined the inhalation of magia, quickening his step.

"Watch it, Skip," Drusilla said.

Without meaning to, he had stepped on his companion's ankle. "Sorry," he said, shaking himself, turning his attention to their immediate surroundings.

Tall grass and weeds conquered the neglected farmlands. Great swathes were trampled by Ürkün hordes and legion's sandals, but the wild sprang back to life at the fertile season's commands. To their west, the foothills diminished, and their forests were felled. It was a bare and barren land–the casualty of order. Ahead, Legion IX's column marched between the first ring of palisade walls–one of three which encompassed the city.

"They've seen some fighting," he said as they drew close, noting the disrepair. The spiked trunks had been flattened or burned in sections. Their bases were overgrown with weeds, and their towers had long since been abandoned by the Fifth Legion. Arrows prickled their battlements in a flurry of feathers like sticky burdock pods. Abrupt mounds littered the earth. Bodies, long since discarded.

"Remind you of something?" Orsin said over his shoulder.

"Tyrlon Hill," Arius murmured.

"Hespera, guide them," Orsin prayed grimly.

"The Fifth Legion shall be glad of our arrival," Tenoris said chipperly.

"Yeah," Drusilla said. "Looks like they've had a tough time of it."

"Might not have held out without us," Kaesii added, a note of pride in his voice.

"The Ürkün were this close?" Fulmin asked.

"They had the Fifth surrounded," Skippii said. "Pressed between here and the walls. The besiegers became the besieged. But… if they couldn't sever the Fifth's connection with the sea, supplies would have still come. We own the waves."

"This again," Cur sighed. "Tactless talk of tacticians."

"The Fifth is a veteran legion, right?" Fulmin asked, ignoring the old man's grumblings. "Must take one to do their job. Surrounded on all sides with just these flimsy wooden walls to keep the enemy out."

"Nothing wrong with a palisade," Cur said. "Keeps you safe at night."

Skippii felt that sentiment sink in as he passed a mound littered with nettles and brambles, speckled with faded red fabric and the dead glean of bronze. A frenzy of flies flew above the mound, joined by crows, hopping through the wreckage.

"Hespera, guide them," he whispered, in the manner of Orsin.

A grim silence befell them as they marched over the killing fields. But as the column entered the second perimeter of palisade walls, their trepidation faded. The gate's towers were manned–banners flying the legion's reds. Scant legionnaires stood aside on the path, watching as they passed. Kaesii saluted to a small group, who were setting axes to the sodden timber remains of a derelict battlement. Unmoving, all they returned were indiscernible scowls upon dirty, war-hardened faces.

"Ungrateful sods," Kaesii muttered.

"Hey," Cur snapped. "None of that."

Before them spanned half a mile of mostly empty terrain–a staging ground for defence against outside attacks. But within the inner-most palisade walls, smokestacks rose from campfires within, blown on a gust of sea wind, which carried a tang of salt mixed with the grime of livestock and the putrid ditches of legionnaires. Skippii held his breath as a gust of wind brought a frontal assault to his senses. Marching beside him, Kaesii and Drusilla coughed and complained.

Tenoris took a deep breath through his nostrils. "Ahh. Smells like home."

"You were raised in an outhouse?" Kaesii said.

"A farm, where all the fields are an outhouse in spring."

Drawing closer to the city's walls, certain details revealed themselves to him. Nine huge towers spanned the southern wall, and more disappeared out of sight where it veered north. Each rose twenty or more meters tall, their flat rock as smooth as grey gowns. What he had taken for brownish-red banners adorning the dauntless walls, suddenly revealed a nastier truth. They were legionnaire's cloaks–hundreds of them–faded by the elements, marred with black inscriptions. Upon the towers of the gatehouse, many cloaks had been woven together to create large banners painted with cosmic swirling eyes. One vast tapestry eye from the battlements of the central tower, its baleful eye looking unblinkingly upon Legion V encamped beneath its walls.

The column marched towards the inner-most defences and veered west along its edge. As Skippii neared, he saw the depth of the ditches and solidness of the palisade walls, supported by many towers–at least one every twenty metres. This had been the Fifth Legion's last line of defence against marauding Ürkün, and it had held, yet it was meagre compared to Nerithon's grey walls looming behind it. The path beneath him became churned with mud. He planted his spear, stopping himself from slipping as their formation loosened, struggling to keep pace.

Custos Maritor raised his voice at the head of their tonnage.

"Look sharp, lads. Keep step. Show the Fifth we're not just a bunch of velvets. We're proud men of the Ninth."

The palisade to their right was arrayed with the faces of legionnaires from the Fifth. Their expressions were darkened by grime and toil. So many were veterans, or had been made veterans by the siege, that he could not see a young face amongst them. Forcing his head straight and his eyes from wandering, he marched in time, following the column as it took a wide berth around Nerithon, coming ever closer to the flat-topped mountain beyond. Skippii's eyes wandered to its dark crown, closer now, that he could almost make out the details of something lurking within its barren, shadowy peak.

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Something jolted within him–a knot coming loose. Without meaning to, he had summoned a fraction of his power, and felt the earth open up beneath him. His eyes were drawn to the mountain. It was not as tall as most mountains, but expansive, like a great bear laid low over the landscape. His feet hastened beneath him, eager to bring him to its base, and he thought not to step on the ankles of the man in front.

Finally, after a long march, their cohort entered what was to be their camp. Situated in the vast foothills of the mountain about half a mile from the city, their vantage was roughly level with the tops of Nerithon's walls. Scouts had picked the spot, and slaves from Legion V had constructed it ahead of their arrival. They divided into their cohort blocks, then again into tonnages, and finally, they erected their companeight's tent. Skippii caught one last view of the siege's layout before the legion obscured his vision. Strangely, the palisades ended at the mountain's foothills to the north, where Nerithon's walls stretched out to meet them.

"The encirclement is broken," he observed. "Right where the walls meet the foothills."

Tenoris raised his eyebrows, glancing north. As tall as he was, he might well have caught sight of the palisade's stoppage over the heads of legionnaires and camp beasts. "Is that our task?"

"I think so," he said.

"What's that?" Fulmin asked, coming close.

"The siege is broken to the north-west," Skippii pointed. "But I suspect it continues again on the other side, where the walls meet the sea."

"What could break it?" he asked.

"Apertatrox," Kaesii said confidently. "They must have had a few to smash through the palisades."

"I doubt that," Drusilla said. "Anything can break a wooden wall."

"The siege failed," Skippii said, shaking his head. "Imagine that. Camping out here for eighteen months, surviving off sea-faring rations and digging latrines, and fighting the enemy, and it's all for nothing, because they break the siege."

"It can't be for nothing," Kaesii said. "They must be just as tired of it too."

"Maybe," Skippii sighed, sensing a gloom spread within himself. The faces of legionnaires from the Fifth flickered in his mind–their weariness, all grit and gaunt. Their visage clung to him, the damp after rains. The sun set slowly while their slaves built the camp and prepared an evening meal, but he was unable to shake the storm clouds from his mind. He had learned at an early age to fear those faces–the squalor in a man's heart who had given in to depression and desperation. All too often after a difficult battle, older legionnaires had snapped at him–thrown things or smacked him–punished him for their own hard luck. There had been no father to protect him, merely a collection of older brothers and surrogates, whose temper he was at the mercy of.

Not now. Never again, he reminded himself.

His companeight ate in a tired silence, except for Tenoris, who marvelled at the city walls before them.

"When duty calls, shall we be chosen to scale such walls? I can think of no greater honour."

"Have your honour," Kaesii said. "But if we're on the ladders and towers, I'm pushing to the front. Formation be damned. I want that crown."

"What crown?" Tenoris asked. "They will make you king?"

"The Corona Muralis," Skippii said. "Awarded to the first legionnaire who breaches the walls."

"You haven't heard of it?" Fulmin asked. "I thought everyone knew about the Corona."

"I am a simple farmer," Tenoris said, holding his hands up. "Whence the word crown brushes my ears, they close shut like a snail whose head has been poked by a stick."

"So what?" Kaesii said. "Anyone can claim it, if those are there to witness and testify. And it guarantees a promotion."

"If you survive," Orsin muttered.

"They can't forge the Muralis big enough for your head," Drusilla said. "It's never been done."

Kaesii scowled. "Laugh all you want, Agrippa, but when I'm your superior, I'm going to make you do all sorts of dirty deeds."

"Just as long as I'm not in the same tent," Cur said.

Drusilla laughed. "That's what you would do with command, make me your lover?"

"No. Disgusting." Kaesii grimaced. "You'll see."

That night, Skippii decided it was best not to venture away from the camp to train with Cliae. He needed rest and to gain a lay of the land, but also, the presence of Legion V made him uneasy. Though his infamy had spread throughout the Ninth Legion, rumour may not yet have reached the Fifth. Legion V possessed a host of their own arcanus, as well as what was said to be a fragment of their companion Coven. Rumor was that, during the first battle of Nerithon after six months of siege, Legion V's Coven suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of an Ürkün magi–the very same who dwelled behind Nerithon's walls now. Though rumours varied, and Skippii would rather hear it from the mouth of a witness, he was wary not to spark fear amongst the ranks of men whose nightmares were likely stalked by heresy.

As he stared into the campfire, memories occurred to him which had since sunk beneath the restless currents of busy days. However, now that he had taken an hour to rest and think, they rose easily to the surface. Sitting beside Cliae and Tenoris, he shared the visions which had come to him while he had been unconscious after the evocation of Seismic Quake had drained him dry. He recounted the doom and dread at the earth's destruction, then the light and a meadow of snow, and a fair lady who had come to ease his heart and soul.

Tenoris gasped. "You speak of Oyaltun, Goddess of Foresight. Those were not dreams, but events that have not yet, and may not, occur."

Skippii shook his head slowly. "A spirit, maybe. But the Goddess? Any Goddess?"

"You speak of her, in your words, without your knowing or trying to confirm a thing." His voice warbled with excitement. "The soft snows, which fall like the many unique lives of an event upon the cold past, forming and layering into peaks and troths. And above the clouds: the future. The wisdom to read these lives, and to gently move through them without disturbing. And her eyes, above all, a magnificence which cannot be beheld by any mortal, spare his soul. The witness of a thousand children yet to be born and ten-thousand dead, who no longer grieve the pains of mortality."

"Whoa, hold on." he snapped his fingers before Tenoris' eyes. "Granted, it was all those things, but…"

"Why not, Skip," Tenoris said sincerely. "Why not you?"

Shutting his eyes, Skippii struggled for an answer.

In the quiet, Cliae cleared their throat. "We choose our Gods. We submit, and are initiated. Some then bear marks upon their flesh of their devotion, however most of us just say a nighttime prayer. But you…"

"Are astray," Skippii insisted. He had never chosen a master of his soul, never been guided by a father into the Pantheon. He was a legionnaire, a man of soil and blood. And now, he was something else, something yet explainable. But he was not an astral, not accountable to the Gods. Not a child of grace.

"Or something in between," Cliae said.

"She chose you," Tenoris whispered, aghast. "You have caught the eye of the all-seeing eye. And she greeted you, and held your hand. This pertains more than a mere chance visit. Such visions are not exulted by many a devout apostle. She chose you. I am certain."

"Well, if that is the case, how do I find out what she wants?"

Cliae and Tenoris shared a glance, but each hesitated.

"Let me guess," Skippii said. "Another anomaly?"

"Acolytes sometimes, when gathered, perform rituals to commune," Cliae said. "But, I don't think the same rules apply here."

"She will come to you when needed," Tenoris said. "I am sure of it. The Goddess Oyaltun is benevolent, though her heart is shrouded in woe. Cold as her hands may be, they are soft. Is this as you remember."

"It is," Skippii admitted. "Then it must be her, or an illusion of her."

"No magi nor spirit has the ability to divinate an illusion of the Gods," Tenoris said like a philosopher. "They possess the power of their image. None may imitate it."

"I don't suppose Oyaltun has anything to do with fire and ground energy… earthquakes or…" He trailed off as the two shook their heads.

"You should know this," Tenoris said. "But each time I make to lecture you on the Pantheon, you shut your mind and throw yourself into a task. However, now, surely, you cannot deny that Oyaltun, Sentiescence, beholds you in her ever seeing grace?"

Skippii laughed exasperatedly, holding his hands up in surrender. "Okay, I'll accept it. Just… One benefit of being astray is that I've never had to suffer through boring religious lectures."

"Oh Skip," Tenoris laughed. "All of the lectures of all the great saints cannot amount to one true visage from the Gods. You truly are gifted."

"Hey," he slapped the legionnaire's thick thigh. "If she comes again, I'll put in a good word for you."

The smile fell from his face as he stared deep into Skippii's eyes. "You would do that?"

"Sure," he shrugged, eyes wandering over the nearby mountain. "I'd like to climb that."

"Me too, brother," Drusilla said. "A fine flat-top, perfect for hiking."

"The Sleeping Mountain," Arius added. "Its name."

"Perhaps I'll train in its foothills."

"You won't have time," Cur said. "Siege chores. Ever heard of them, lad?"

"They'll put us to work plugging the leak," Orsin said, motioning towards where Legion V's palisade walls ended, giving way to the foothill's forests. "I wonder why they failed."

"They were surrounded," Kaesii said. "Tough job."

"But why there," Orsin mused. "Why was that the weak spot?"

"Furthest from the sea?" Cur suggested. "No support from ships."

"Or something in the forest," Airus said.

All their minds wandered as the shadows lengthened.

Skippii gazed at the mountaintop, sensing the tingle of his magia underfoot. "We'll soon find out."

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