For all the things he had to be sorry for, Ashur was most sorry for betraying those few who had loved him, despite the flaws that made him wholly a person. As he lie in the darkness of a cellar beneath the gentle city of Boros, the capitol of Eden, Ashur attempted to recount every waking memory he had, from the moment she had stepped into his life, to the day the nysol carted him in irons to the dank, dark hovel he currently was resident of.

The tale of Ashur Brightflame mothers told their children at bedtime, when they begged for a story of grand soldiers and unlikely heroes, was not the tale of glory many made it out to be. It was a tale of tragic woe that had become twisted and sweetened as it traveled from mouth to mouth and fell upon innocent ears. They told of how he sprang forth a grand warrior, superior at the deadly dance of swords and marvelous at the whispering song of the bow, sneaking about slaying this evil lord and that vile peasant, so that the people might be safe. Mothers told in hushed voices about how he’d gotten the name Ashur Brightflame. He’d always hated hearing that story. Many claimed his name came from saving aldachs after burning an entire castle to the ground so they could be freed, and slaying their captor with a flaming sword he pulled from the fire, but truly he got the name as a jest in his expense. A frightened mother aldach he’d attempted to rescue had scorched the flesh from his hand when he’d reached for her shackles, and in turn, she had burned the stupid shack around them, nearly killing him.

This bittersweet story started with a half-mad woman, as most often do. Her name had been Syllah the Aberrant. When her little band of worvesa stumbled upon the suspicious little town of Kinper Ashur had once called home, he’d had no idea why they might have called her that until it was too late. Although the very laws of nature forbade torem and worvesa from coming together as one – the toxins in a worvesa’s claw, depending on how bad the wound, could kill a torem – Ashur was smitten with her wild beauty. Her nest of auburn hair flared a brilliant red, smears of dirt from their travels stained her skin, and her mischievous blue-green eyes burned with an intensity that beckoned Ashur to her.

It hadn’t taken him long though to find out she was moonstruck. Wolf creatures that spent too many days undisciplined beneath the silver rays of their goddess Mother Moon often had no control on their animal half. This made those that were moonstruck very dangerous, and anyone in their path in immediate danger. Ashur had been naive, a young boy the age of twenty (nearly a babe for the hundreds of years his kind could live) and did not see the danger. When he took her to be his forever, she lost herself, bit him in the shoulder, and when Ashur turned to flee, mauled his back to bloody ribbons. By any right, the amount of toxin that flooded his blood should have killed him in a minute, but by some miracle Ashur was saved.

They killed Syllah the Aberrant, his wife, the second before she could tear his head from his shoulders; stuck her full of arrows, and then burned her. In the months it took for his recovery, Ashur opened his eyes to the horror that lie outside the boundaries of his home town. The innocence he’d not had long to cherish left. The second he was well recovered, Ashur took all the necessary equipment, and stole away in the dead of night to see all that he might see with his opened eyes.

Behind him, Ashur left the memory of thirteen older siblings and two loving parents that would weep for him. It would do little good to take those memories with him, wherever he was going, yet as nights got colder and his rations shorter, it seemed he would die a beggar amongst beggars in his cruel country, and he cried for the memories to be life again. Kin shut out kin in the black of night so that they might protect their wares, suspicious of any unfamiliar faces that stumbled about, stomachs growling. It was in this time of misery Ashur developed his infamous skill of stalking the night like a wraith with sticky fingers.

While in a city one day, a band of people called the Gods’ Chosen traded bread and a warm place to sleep for his skills. Already seeming a life time ago, Ashur had practiced sword and bow, his aspiration to be a Protector like his father. Protectors walked the walls surrounding the people, soldiers to keep the peace inside and slay foes that dare think to impede on this. What a youngling dream that had been; all the children wanted to be Protectors. For his adept skills, this group that claimed they were holy had him trained vigorously night and day amongst other boys much like himself, with little care to his actual well being. Once, a friend of his caught a knick to the chest. It festered and killed him within a fortnight, but those holy men cared naught for the boy, only had the others bury him before they set out to travel to Nook, the treacherous mountain pass that lead from Lavium his home country to Igan. After that, Ashur kept no friends.

In those mountains, Ashur learned what cold truly was. It snowed day and night. At first, the white tufts drifting down on a breeze with no care in the world had been delightful, but soon he learned what a nightmare they truly could be. Those fluffy balls of frozen water compacted, stuck to him everywhere, freezing him, weighing him down. It was all he could do not to freeze to death like so many did. To make matters worse, while in the mountains, they had attracted mountain bears, mottled white and brown and standing twelve feet tall on their hind legs. Between the cold and the wildlife, their group of two hundred that traveled to Nook dwindled to forty-eight by the time they reached the other side. Not that the Gods’ Chosen cared. Weren’t holy people supposed to care and protect the weak?

A piercing beam of light shattered the dark tranquility, as well as Ashur’s reminiscence. He turned away, shielding his eyes from the harsh flames that flickered. How long had it been since he’d last seen light? When was the last time he’d been warm at fireside? “Oh, Ashur,” whispered a soft voice, sweet and gentle like the kiss of a breeze on a cool spring day. Would he ever feel such a thing again? “You look dreadful, my dear.”

The purple eyes opened against the fire. What did he have to fear from it? Once, fire had burned him, twice it had scorched everything he cherished. They were kin now, he and fire. “Lena,” Ashur whispered back. She knelt at the doorway of his prison, a torch held in hand, bathing her features in dancing golden light. As ever, she was beautiful, peridot eyes glittering with unshed tears, her silken brown curls hanging loosely about her slim shoulders. At her waist, coarse white hair sprouted, coating the horse body that made up the rest of her, though it looked more like a white doe than a horse. “You shouldn’t have come… if they see you…”

Lena shook her head, lazy curls bouncing. “I had to say goodbye.” A single tear dripped from her right eye and traced a path down her flushed cheek, until it fell to the cold hard ground. It was his fault that tear dripped, and all the ones that would follow. “But why, Ashur? Why did you join them?” The heartbroken tone in her spring voice made Ashur want to cry with her.

Through a throat thick with tears, Ashur choked out three words. “I don’t know.” Truly he didn’t, truly. When he’d joined the Black Hand, those monsters, he’d thought they were nothing more than sweet holy men, but they were vile creatures that ripped the world to pieces. I was a monster once too, then. Oh, Lena, you loved a monster, but all you see is a broken man.

Time spent with the Black Hand, whom had disguised themselves as the Gods’ Chosen until they came of power, had been eye opening. Though he had been a youngling when first he’d met their leader Siphan (meaning love in Elaren), whose true false identity was Siphor (meaning destruction or death in Elaren), this man decided that Ashur was worth watching and little did he know there was someone following him on his righteous journey to do right by the People. By the time they’d made it to Orlanthia, the city of the weak, cruel kelen, Ashur was already four years older. Why he’d stayed with the Gods’ Chosen for so long, he couldn’t say, but he knew he no longer wanted to be of their company.

It was then he took a boat from Zahara to Eden, the land of the nysol. On his way, they became ship-wrecked on Vespera on the continent Belryn, amongst wild men and women. These people nurtured him to health, and with them he stayed ten years. Here in Vespera was where Ashur earned his first markings of fealty, and the name Foasalo, the Brave Fool. The clan who became his family for nearly ten years was at war when he became a part of them, and thanks to his foolish bravery and brilliant ideas, clan Fodas Kii soon became reigning clan, feared and respected, the tale of Foasalo one all the children knew. Had it not been for Ashur, Fodas Kii would have seized to exist, but now they were four thousand strong and growing, from last he’d heard.

The very thought of his time in Vespera made Ashur want to weep. He’d never wanted to leave, but as those around him aged and he seemed not to, Ashur realized that the longer he stayed the sooner those he cherished most dearly would wither and die. They sent him on his way with a brown tattoo of a viper on his left forearm above the words Foasalo o Fodas Kii, the Brave Fool of Winter Water.


“I can’t bear to see your head on one of those spikes,” Lena sobbed, the torch falling from her delicate hand as she pitched forward. Disregarding the stench of him, the gentle nysol woman cried softly into his shoulder. Tears blurred his vision, but he dare not let one fall. He focused on comforting the one who’d been his, well and truly.

The fact that Lena had to suffer for his crimes just like so many of his friends sickened his stomach, but he swallowed the bile. Too many he’d done wrong by. Like the man and his son he’d handpicked as a sacrifice to Lord Siphor so the thousands of a town they pillaged might be spared. Even in his darkest days, Ashur had tried to save as many as he could, but not everyone could be saved. Too many had fallen by him, and with him he took their ghosts to bed. Killing was his guilty pleasure.

In Eden, Ashur was taken under the wing of Natayen Maena, the master of bow. Nysol were peaceful people that cared not for outsiders, no matter who they be, so long as they did not kill nor disobey the laws. Another ten years were spent here, learning the wisdom of the nysol, becoming proficient in his bow, learning obedience and pride and honor and loyalty. Lena grew up with him in her life. She doted on him day and night, and once, her chasing after him had annoyed him. He learned patience because of her as well. Many things were learned in Eden.

Yet, he had to continue. There was nothing for him to do in Eden once he’d read every dusty tome and could shoot a bulls eye from a distance of a mile, so Ashur continued his journey to Drakka, homeland to the wondrous aldach people. They treated him suspiciously at first, but upon seeing his viper tattoo, and making fun of his nickname, they took him as their own. He fought against giants from the mountains of Iss that seeped down, even played a crucial part in the war against them some years later when an intelligent orc all the way from Axminster rallied them.

The phantom itch of a missing leg replaced by steel and magic caused Ashur to twitch. Even now, hundreds of years later, it still felt as though he could wiggle his toes, his real flesh toes. During the Battle of Iss, a giant hacked his leg from the knee down out from under him. It left him indisposed the rest of the war, yet as he recovered he gave insight on the weaknesses of orcs and giants, remembering his studies in Eden. His valiance and the sacrifice of his left leg earned Ashur a flaring black sun on his chest, with the word Miasma, friend in sunaren, inscribed neatly in the center with the blood ink of the lead orc.

Lena sniffed and backed away from him. She laughed nervously, wiping the back of her hand across her petite nose. “I shouldn’t be the one crying,” she said. She took the dying torch again and breathed life to the flame. “I did not know you were in Boros until today. How did you get… get captured?”

He didn’t want to answer her, even though she deserved an answer to all the questions she asked. “It was foolish of me to think they would not know what I’d done.”

There was pain in her eyes. No doubt she was thinking of the tales she’d heard of Ashur the Black, Ashur the Savage. That strange man, the familiar stranger that had once been him, had been as cruel as his stories told. Innocents died on his sword every day. They didn’t deserve to die, but they had, because of him. “Why?” Lena grabbed his burned hand, long healed, though ugly and heavily scarred. “Why ruin the glowing reputation with a sinister one? The People loved you, as I loved you, and you turned on us as if it was no matter to you.”

Ashur spent nearly forty years in Drakka, learning to fight with the black obsidian leg forged with magic to move like a true limb. He enjoyed the company of those he called friends, but once again, he decided to move on. For a time, he traveled with an Endrothi clan of the Marches. What a peculiar race the endrothi were. Their women were superior to their men how a man might have been to a woman. Everything worked backwards. It wasn’t very long before Ashur went far, far away from the endrothi.

In his two hundred something years traveling the world, Ashur learned many things and saved many lives. He returned to Orlanthia at the call of some strange urge and was here recruited by the Gods’ Chosen men turned Black Hand. The order of the Black Hand was an ancient cult known for murdering people in sacrifice to the Fourteen, or so they claimed. Whomever led them had the Gift of Gods, cursed with life forever and strange powers. He could bind hundreds of people to him and force them to kill for his own pleasure, and this, Siphor enjoyed very much.

Even though by the time Ashur stumbled upon the Black Hand, he was famous world-wide and rich beyond his dreams, something was missing in his life that this cult of people filled. They were killing left and right for sport, innocent children and screaming women, but there was a fire that ignited in his soul that had never existed before. The thrill of doing whatever he pleased, not bound by honor nor afraid of being scorned, was enticing to Ashur like nothing else that ever had. He decided to spare Lena the pain of knowing her love had enjoyed murder.

“I was forced.” It wasn’t wrong, truly. Within the first week of rejoining the Black Hand, Siphor had him blooded, a process where the blood of his new family was mixed into a goblet, and a black hand was tattooed into his left wrist, his burnt wrist. The agony of the mark had him near to screaming, but those who did not fear pain or death did not scream. Pain was nothing more than an inconvenience, nothing to whine about, not to a warrior. A true warrior bled for his family. By blooding him, as he did to many others, Siphor could take control of any his peoples’ minds and make them kill.

Who was his family now? The Black Hand? Forever he would be bound by blood to them, the same he would be to his true family. Yet, the Black Hand had dwindled to forty scattered across the world, Siphor slain, and now Ashur had the Gift of Gods. His true blood family was all dead; his parents died of age and his siblings of this or that. As the last Stagon of Kinper, the last leader of the Black Hand, where did Ashur put his loyalty? What gods did he pray to? The Fourteen his parents had, the three faced god his people of Fodas Kii worshiped, or the faceless hundreds the Black Hand worshiped? He’d known all three, but none had ever listened to his prayers.

“Lena!” barked Maena, coming down with a torch of his own. The clang of his hooves on the stone floor was loud, and Ashur wondered how he’d never heard Lena’s gait approaching the cell. “You get away from that scum now, you hear me girl?” The master of bow, a big man with an even bigger stallion body, sleek black with a white tipped tail that flicked angrily, glared heavily with black eyes as he hauled his daughter to her feet.

She wailed and dropped the torch. It promptly gutted out once it hit the ground. “He’s not scum!” she cried, hitting him in the chest with her tiny fists. “He’s my husband and I won’t see his head struck from his shoulders! You can’t let them take him, father, you can’t, please.” His lovely wife dissolved into a fit of tears once more. Her gruff father grunted, slammed the cell door shut, and whisked Lena away.

Ashur feared he would never see her again. Once, Maena had encouraged the marriage of his daughter to the gallant Ashur Brightflame the Brave Fool of the People, but now he wanted it terminated, as if it never happened. Such would happen should he die, releasing Lena from her vows before the Fourteen, and his before the hundred faceless of the Black Hand. Even when he’d married his wife, he’d been a monster, and she hadn’t known. The guilt that settled in the pit of his stomach made him sick again, and this time, Ashur didn’t stop it.

They came for him again sometime later. So far down in the dark, he had no idea what time it might have been, or what day. He didn’t even know if he’d fallen asleep or not, but it didn’t matter. Today was the day he would die for being a traitor to everything he spent two centuries defending. In truth, he felt his head was too light of a price to pay for such deeds.

It was midday when they hauled him into the sunlight. Though nysol were normally peaceful people, today they were outraged with him for having abandoned all those he protected once. They plucked at his clothes, yanked on his hair, spat on him, and threw things at him all the time the nysol Protectors marched him through the crowd. The People parted before them, crying out, wondering why their gallant savior had betrayed them all, wondering how they were to ever trust another after this day.

There was no answer for them, so Ashur didn’t give one. Nysol he had once trained marched Ashur right up to the executioners block. The black garbed man – for it was a man with a man’s body, and not a horse one – leaned heavily against a double bladed ax, black blade glinting deadly in the sun. Soon, that edge would come to his neck, and sever head from body. Lena would never see it happen, Maena would make sure of that, but she would know, and he hated himself for it.

Of all the things Ashur Stagon Brightflame had to be sorry for, it was betraying his lady wife.

The sun sat high in the sky, poised at midday, but darker than black clouds rolled in, writhing until they had a rough similarity to a black hand high above their heads, though none seemed to notice. The warm wind turned icy cold, whipping leaves and twigs about their heads. The smell of Eden’s gardens sweetened this oh so bitter day. The mourning People looked on at the one they called hero, watched as the man in black brandished his axe with an infallible sureness. The man in black never missed.

Not until today.