Bit early, but I had it done early so yeah.

Act Three: Too Far Fallen

Kardel gazed down the barrel of his sniper rifle, looking for the perfect shot. From his vantage point, a ridge above the middle lane, he could see over a large stretch of river, and all he had to do was wait until some unfortunate Dire hero appeared, and their head would become a red mist faster than they could comprehend their death.

A pale horse emerged from the fog of war, its rider shrouded in black robes and even darker mist. He wielded a titanic runeblade with effortless ease - not that it would help him.

Kardel smiled, and fired.

The line was perfect - the bullet sailed with sublime precision to strike the head of the rider. The horse reared back, and both steed and rider vanished as if they had never been there.

"Illusion rune," said a murky voice behind the sniper. "Barely a fraction of the true Lord, but it served its purpose."

Kardel whirled back to find the rider staring down at him, his face cove…
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Act Four: In the Shadow of Self

"Pawn takes rook."

"Knight to E5. Check."

"Remind me again where we are going," Lanaya said, interrupting. Arash turned from the game, Dragonus still studying the board intensely. The Assassin was sitting on a windowsill, passing the time with a book of some kind. He couldn't blame her for being relatively anti-social, considering how comparatively terrible she was at chess to the two locked in furious combat.

"You wanted to see my past," Arash replied. "We are going to it."

She raised an eyebrow. "At the start, your vagueness was almost enticing. Now, it's just irritating."

"There are bad memories at this place," he said gravely. "The less I speak of it the better." His response was met with a shrug, and Lanaya returned to her book. The carriage they travelled in rolled smoothly along the roads, dragged along as it were by two steeds of Avernus. Abaddon hadn't trusted anyone else to drive them, so he had done so himself.

It turned out that the Sk…
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I didn't want to do this.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I *really* didn't want to do this. Especially considering I'm about to enter into my HSC Trials, last thing I should be doing is getting bogged down in another drawn-out story.

But I did. Like a ******.

So this is set post-events in Outside the Cycle with a different focus and cast members. It's got an... interesting opening. Warning for the squeamish.

The Waning World: Act One

Accursed Reunion

Scene One
Nightsilver burned.

Flames leapt from the glittering branches to crackle ominously in the sky, the orange tongues a startling contrast to the deep blue of the night. Around, indistinct forms ran, desperately trying to extinguish the flames.
*
An underground cell, the only light coming from a smouldering torch, almost burnt out, set in an alcove high in the wall. Within the cell, one man sits, hunched over, yet his stance is still defiant.
*
Buckets of water are being passed around; sections of the blaze are extinguished, b…
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