From General Norij Gaston, Personal Journal
We were winning when it happened. The sky went from clear to stormy in the course of five minutes, and thunderbolts flickered within the gathering clouds. The battle lost intensity as more and more men backed away, spooked by the unnatural display. I ordered my division to engage, but soldiers are a superstitious lot: even in this age of magic, many will not dare to challenge the unearthly.
And suddenly, lightning fell to the ground in sheets, ripping through Seleucarian and Ashtanian alike. The storm of lightning ignited waves of fire that tore across the ground; spot tornadoes hurled men and horses to the afterlife; hailstones the size of billiard balls pummeled men to death. In the space of ten breaths, I watched a thousand people die, and even my battle-hardened senses felt the first stirrings of terror. As the destruction slowly began to focus on our side of the battleground, it became clear that this was a battle we could not win by force of arms.
And then I saw Catarin urge her horse to a gallop, knocking her own men aside as she raced to the front line. A hundred bolts of lightning struck at her, and all were repelled by a dome of golden light, one that grew larger with each attack it deflected. At her side was Damen Kephry, swinging his mighty sword to clear her path through the broken Seleucarian lines. As I watched, Catarin raised the Staff of Nicator above her head with one hand, and Three Moons with the other. Her skull cap had fallen in her headlong gallop, leaving her hair free in the wind, and I swear she was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. By the time she neared the center of the Seleucarian force, the golden shield was large enough to cover the entire battlefield, and the mystic storm overhead raged uselessly.
"See how the witch Castomira would spend your lives to win this battle!" Catarin yelled out to the Seleucarian armies that surrounded her. "Decide for yourselves whether her cause is your own!" The Seleucarian soldiers at the front line, already unsure of themselves, seemed as though they might be receptive to her outcry, but the Royal Elites at the center of the Seleucarian division fanned out to surround her and Lord Kephry. "You are the citizens of the city of Nicator and Piraeus! But this time, the Black Wave comes from the center of the city. Know this! Castomira Brangwin holds the evil of the Tsol'teth within her, and now you see its fruit! The choice is yours, but know that if you side with Castomira, you will share her fate."
The storm front had reached each horizon, and in every quarter, death reigned. Catarin's dome of protection covered only a small portion of the dark storm's ravage. Even as the Royal Elites closed in, and Lord Kephry prepared to make a valiant stand, Catarin visibly came to a decision. She said something to Kephry, then both of them disappeared in a brilliant flash of white. The golden dome of light remained, as Ashtanian and Seleucarian troops engaged the Royal Elites. In this area, at least, the battle could be won. But my spyglass showed Ashtanian and Shallamese armies crushed to bits, and Royal Elites chasing the stragglers through a hellish playground of fire and ice.
From The Sealed Files of Castomira Brangwin
Win or lose, history will cast me as a villain. Even if I reign for a thousand years, and my empire reveres me for ten thousand more, all things must topple, and when the pendulum of dominion swings back to good and light and happiness, my name will be remembered with hatred and fear.
This prospect fills me with satisfaction.
It's only been a year and a half that I've held these dreams of destruction and domination, and yet I must concentrate to remember how my dark wishes evolved. At first, I wanted only to kill Catarin. Then, I thought to destroy the entire nation of Seleucar. And now, I've hit upon a combination that seems perfect to me: kill Catarin, and then rule over Seleucar with such unrelenting cruelty that even in Heaven, Catarin and all her ancestors will feel the agony of loss. Perhaps I shall hold seances solely that I might gloat. Perhaps I shall invade the sacrosanct Tomb of Kings and raise them all as zombies to do my bidding. My son Parni is partly of their blood. That means that in his hands, the Staff of Nicator will take on royal power. But if his soul is black enough, that power will be twisted and vile to match. Perhaps I can spit in the eyes of the gods themselves, for it is said that what is made by the Logos cannot be unmade.
My son. I truly do have a mother's instincts. I want to protect him, nurture him, raise him to be as powerful and fearless as he can be. I want to mold him in my image, make of him what I wish that I could be. Might a human mother cringe to think that I wish to raise Parni as a monster? He is of my blood, he has drunk my milk. Already his soul is a dark shade of gray. I am hard as diamond, dyed in evil, fed richly on souls and heartbreak. With my power and the blood of holy kings, what might Parni become? The nemesis of a thousand states. The murderer of a thousand dreams.
I no longer think of myself as human. Word has it that Catarin claims I've inherited the evil power of the Tsol'teth. I've no reason to doubt her; I've never researched my own lineage. Perhaps I am an unwitting pawn to the Dark Masters, long after their deaths. If so, then they have crafted a perfect tool, for I feel nothing but joy at the imminent fruition of my plans.
Yet I feel fear, as well. For now, Catarin still holds the Staff. If I can place it in Parni's infant hands, Catarin's bond with it will be broken; but until then, she is a very real threat to me. I must keep Parni near me, to steal the Staff from Catarin. But that means that Catarin can find me in an eyeblink, if she uses the Staff to travel to Parni. It is a measured risk I take. And in this journal, no braggadocio: this may be my final entry. To kill Trenton Deis was far more than I expected of her. Have I underestimated Catarin yet again?
From The Sealed Files of Catarin the Just
Editor's note: This single text, written on the first few pages of an otherwise blank journal, was found embedded in the cornerstone of the Second Imperial Palace after it was demolished by the Sapience League. It was contained in a box, along with a slip of parchment lettered "To be read after the fall of the Empire." Under the circumstances, it was deemed appropriate to open it on the spot.
The light faded. We were in the Palace. I could tell that she was near. At the last second, she had knocked me aside, preventing me from reaching her son directly. I knew that she was gathering her power. I could feel it in the stones around me. The entire Palace throbbed with ill, like an infected cut pulsing pain. Damen felt it, but could not sense its full scope. I could. The scars of battle left by the first war had been hastily repaired, but the violent wrong possessing the palace now would not be so easily erased.
"A very interesting way of getting into the Palace," Damen said quietly.
"The only way. I did not mean to bring you with me. You should escape to the streets. You won't have a chance against Castomira."
Damen nodded. "I remember the last time. Listen. I can hear fighting out there. Castomira hasn't aimed that storm at the city yet. If you can defeat her, we might win, even with our main forces crippled."
I remember how he looked at that moment, hopeful, the first to truly believe in me since Lucaine died. All the others had bowed to my force of will, or my threats, or my reasoning, but only Damen Kephry had truly given me his fealty. I had begun to understand why his wife had loved him so. But he and I were far too wrapped up in our personal griefs ever to consider letting them go, for years yet, perhaps. "Perhaps" is the best I can say, for at that moment Castomira killed him.
As the violent crackle of her spell faded, Damen slumped to the ground. Steam rose from the gruesome hole in his back. The air shifted slightly, and Castomira Brangwin was no longer invisible. She held a tiny babe in one arm, and her other hand still rippled with the sinuous afterglow of her magic.
"Catarin, my dear. Ah, there should be a special word, a word for someone you hate so much that it's stronger than love. Were we lovers, I could say, 'Catarin, my love,' and perhaps your heart would leap with anticipation. But there's nothing I can say like that right now."
For just a moment, I was drawn in by her posturing. Foolishly, I started to reply. "Why not say, 'Goodbye?' Because—" but this battle was not to follow bardic conventions, and there was to be no lengthy exchange of threats. My mistake. The moment I became distracted with speech, Castomira lunged toward me, arm out, almost too quickly to see. Only my Sentaari training allowed me to pivot around her, reaching out blindly to swing the Staff at her throat. My blow struck home. There was a blinding flash, and she flew backwards into a pillar, striking it so hard that it cracked. The infant flew from her grasp, falling head-first toward the floor.
Again, I could only react on instinct. I dove toward the child, both arms out, letting the Staff fall to the ground. I hit the ground hard, but I managed to catch the baby. Was I foolish to preserve his life? He was the heir of the Tsol'teth. But I could not let an infant die, and claim to be in the right.
As I struggled to my feet, I saw without surprise that Castomira had claimed the Staff.
"Interesting," Castomira said, gesturing with the Staff. "I had thought it would refuse me. Destroy me even. Yet here I stand, untouched."
"The Staff does as I will," I said softly. "This is your final chance to repent. The Tsol'teth power might still be cleansed."
"What will you do? Kill my child? He makes a poor hostage for you, Catarin. Why not return him to his mother?"
I stood there for a long moment, looking at the woman who had once been my friend, someone with whom I had shared my childhood secrets, someone I had once called sister in my heart. And all that was left was a walking ruin of a woman, an intelligent monster twisted out of shape by a cruel and ancient power. "Your evil was an accident of birth. I hope to save him from the same."
"Brainless wench, you cannot raise him in the light when your soul is damned in darkness!" Castomira clenched her fist, and chaotic vapors steamed forth from it, and began to glow. But before she could unleash her magic, the Staff of Nicator shone with a tremendous brilliance, far greater than anything I had seen before. I was later told that the light shone directly through rock, and even hundreds of miles away over the horizon it was visible as a bright spot on the ground itself. My eyes were not harmed, although after the war the Church had to spend months magically restoring the vision of every person within twenty miles of Seleucar.
I had willed the Staff, "Destroy Castomira." But its manifestation of power was beyond my intent or, indeed, my imagination. From the Staff, a beam of light reached up and down, boring into the ceiling and the floor, then widened to a pillar ten feet across. After a long moment, the beam collapsed . . . and Castomira laughed in the middle of it, floating in the air, unhurt.
"I am stronger than the Staff! Look how its power bathes me in light!" And indeed, the residual glow that rippled along Castomira's ebony gown seemed like a ghastly extension of her evil power. In my arms, the baby gurgled contentedly, utterly unaffected by the chaos surrounding him.
Then hell truly broke loose. From the unimaginable depths of the earth, flaming liquid rock spewed up in a geyser. The Staff of Nicator had made a cut miles deep, and the very blood of the earth was jetting forth. With reactions faster than any human's, Castomira instantly summoned arctic cold to freeze the spurting magma in place as quickly as it flowed, but she was not fast enough to stem the eruption, and she found herself scrambling up a growing mound of steaming volcanic rock, spraying lethal cold from her hands in all directions.
If I left her to fight the rage of the earth alone, however, she might prevail. But if I commanded the Staff again to destroy her, what havoc might it wreak? I could not control the Staff of Nicator.
I had one option left. One that felt insanely foolish, yet perfectly right. I charged. I had heard a hundred times in the last month, "Vitem et sanguinem." Blood and lives, indeed. For Seleucar, at last, my blood and life . . . or Castomira's.
Every time Castomira froze the magma beneath her, another section of the rising volcanic mass would explode into flaming shrapnel and liquid rock, defying her every attempt to leap down from the igneous hill she was creating. It was only by luck that I hadn't already been killed by flying rock. But now, after setting my helpless nephew on the ground behind the scant protection of a marble column, I scrambled up toward Castomira, leaping over rivulets of lava, ignoring the flying rocks that whizzed closely past my head.
Castomira's face was pale white and glowing. Spots of darkness moved around her skin, like shifting leaf-shadows. Even as she froze another spray of magma in midair with one hand, she raised the other to meet my advance. But the hand she raised to me was the one that held the Staff, and when she tried to channel her evil magic through it, the Staff pulsed white, once, and blew her hand off. Castomira stared with disbelief at the stump of her wrist, and she still wore that expression when the broken blade of Three Moons took off her head. The Staff of Nicator fell, and with my free hand I snatched it out of the air. Castomira's blood was as red and bright as anyone's. For the last time, Three Moons had drawn its sacred circle of death.
Immediately the Staff quieted the roaring earth, and the lava flow ceased. The Staff's power was mine again, and I used it to bring my nephew back into my arms. I thought it was over. And then Castomira's severed head began to speak, softly and weakly at first, but transforming at the last into an inhuman, demonic shriek.
"This Empire will stretch out for hundreds of years more, hated blood of Nicator. But when the Staff of Nicator comes into Parni's grip, it will end once and for all time. Pray now, for in the end, all that you have fought for is damned. Run now, for in moments, the heart of your city will be consumed! As long as there are humans, our hatred can never die . . . . Tezlari'tarin shall be destroyed, despite every human effort! The Tsol'teth will not be denied!"
For all my reign, I have claimed that the bright light and the opening of the magma well were the result of Castomira's magic. May the gods forgive this small untruth. I write this to set the record straight; I write this in hope that whoever seeks to revive the Empire will realize that the Staff is more than just an artifact for personal aggrandizement, more than just a prize for earning credit with the gods, more than just a trophy of personal might: it is a mystery, subject only to the will of Sarapis. I fear the role it may play in the future of the Empire. I do not doubt Castomira's final prophecy for a moment, although I've sought to delay it. I hope that this may serve as a warning to whoever comes to wield the Staff in the far future.
Castomira's corpse exploded into an acidic wave of black light that consumed the entire Palace, leaving a pitted and uneven crater half a mile across. At its bottom was the geometrically smooth hole that the Staff had burned into the center of the earth. I have always said that the Staff was lost in the battle. It was. In order to avoid the fulfillment of Castomira's prophecy, I dropped the Staff into the hole. I would rather it rest forever in the depths.
The palace was rebuilt in the crater, and the hole was covered by masonry at my request. I've heard them talking behind my back about building a special shrine there after my death, to commemorate the battle. They're calling it the Well of Fire. I can't explain to them why I wanted it sealed. Parni is a moody boy, and rebellious, and although he's never shown a glimmer of hatred or cruelty, I won't risk giving him any ideas that he is destined to destroy the Empire. True or false, it's simply not the sort of thing a thirteen-year-old needs to know.
From Shigen Galuade, A Thousand Happy Endings: The Unexplored Tragedies of the Second War of Succession
Therefore, it becomes clear that Prince Parni showed no resentment whatsoever for the deaths of his mother or his father, having been raised, like all children of the time, in the afterglow of Catarin's glorious victory. Every memory that he had was of his foster parents, who showed him nothing but love and devotion. And he had been raised as a prince, potentially an heir to the imperial throne, and was given an education commensurate with this responsibility. Certainly he could not have felt abandoned. How, then, to explain his disappearance?
Historians have provided a dozen theories, but only a few carry any weight. Consider the facts, sparse though they may be: he went with a group of huntsmen and retainers on a routine game outing in an imperial preserve. He did not return after dark. A search party was sent out the next day, expecting simply to find that the hunting party had camped for the night. Instead, the searchers found the prince's companions scattered through the woods, each ripped limb from limb. Of the prince, there was nothing to be found, then or ever.
There are only four plausible explanations. First, something killed the hunting party and kidnapped the prince. Second, something killed the hunting party and destroyed the prince entirely. Third, something killed the hunting party, and the prince escaped, and has either been unable or unwilling to return to the known areas of Sapience. Fourth, the prince himself killed the hunting party, then disappeared or went undercover.
I am a historian, not a detective. I refuse to endorse one theory over another. However, among less exacting scholars, the prevailing opinion is that Parni's past caught up with him . . . one way or another.
From The Sealed Files of Catarin the Just
So, for better or for worse, this is it: the real story. I've marked this journal to be opened only after the end of the Empire. If my instructions have been followed, and the Empire has already fallen, then tell me: was it worthwhile for me to preserve it?
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