It was as though the volcano’s ashen cloud had chased them back in under the high arch of the southern gate. The riders, grey with exhaustion and wide-eyed with relief, slowed their echoing, stone-clop gallop and looked back at the looming mountain of fire. Like something from their legend, they witnessed a great wall of smoke thunder towards their domain.

The Domain of Vaaria.

Skyward, needling towers punctured the blue, admonishing the clouds in their passing. Their marble relief, lined by ancient and unknown hands, twisted down around the Emigrant’s Streetway with high stone warehouse walls. The riders gasped in alarm, and their horses stared wide-eyed before the hot cloud engulfed them, with hot and choking plumes. With a low, rolling sound, it funnelled like a tsunami down the arteriol alleyways and tributary streetways.

Vaaria was old, but its population was new.

Cautious, the riders stopped within the gloom to gather their bearings and sidle closer for protection. They found to their relief, that they could still breathe despite the severe lack of visibility. One voice leaped out into the bleak beyond, anxious and excited;
“Seargent!! Our caution! Hear me, sir! The flags!”
As if in response, a peculiar rattling noise sounded out from behind them, followed by an abrupt, ‘booming’, that blew their long, matted locks, and more ash behind them in its power.

Like a ghost through a wall, the massively-shouldered and barrel-chested seargent appeared suddenly before them, unhorsed and ashen in a way that engaged their entireity. His face was unfamiliar beneath the ashy film, but its impression was punctured by an infamous stare of unnerving ruthlessness. He opened his mouth to speak, but the gloom around them seemed to utter his baritone words, instead.
“The lever is released - the south gate's now shut tight, but I expect we'll have more trouble."
Then he squinted and pointed a meaty index finger at the rider furthest on the left of the five before him. This rider leaned forward to catch his words.
"Tavok, ride ahead and alert Perenor, tell him about our visitors . . . Vurkan, you stay the gate, and beat some sense into that lame Gatewatch! Drav, Gitcher, Demon! You’re gonna go see our Lady with me! Now come on!”, he roared at them. “Move out!!”

Seargent Laomedur then whistled sharply to his left and lifted his right foot. From nowhere, The cobbles thumped with muted, ash-stamping hooves and a great, hulking mass rushed towards him. With dexterity, the leather clad mountain of man leaped forward, catching a near-invisible stirrup to fling his leg over his mount. In his momentum, he simultaneously caught the reigns to drag him towards this new and formidable problem. The ash cloud was soon thinning and his recon squad parted at gallop to let him through to head the charge to his Mistress. One form remained behind, as ordered. It leaned over the head of its horse, and peered back the way they had came through the haze.

Vurkan murmured to his steed as the tumult of hooves began clattering its way into the clear-cobbled distance.
“Seems like those two got old Deadeye scared . . .”
Suddenly, a slight aftershock had him clutch at the reigns and circle his steed to maintain their balance. Vurkan waited for the tumult to fade. Pass it did, and he patted his horses neck and turned back towards the gate. Earthquakes weren't very common in his recollection - and neither were eruptions. Apparently, the volcano, Araakun wouldn't erupt properly without a prophecy of some sort - the sort he never paid any attention to. Vurkan was apprehensive about the pyrochlastic flow - it should have been more deadly, he considered. No lava had followed him down the mountainside, so he assumed he was safe - for now.

He peered through the dust until he could make out the shape of the portcullis’ interweaving barricade and its guard house walls, juxtaposed with cube-like simplicity. The air was of a mood, and he knew at least one of those two had since become intruders. Outsiders. Hell-bearers from the Nether-realm . . .
Vurkan caught his mind wandering again, and he straightened the meander with greedy anticipation of permissable violence.

Of course, Vurkan believed that a guard would either be dead or incapacitated in some way, and the fact that the stout oaken door creaked open on only one hinge confirmed this expectation. Below a table underneath the window opening out onto the portcullis gateway, lay a hulking, undressed and overweight guardsman. His limbs were twisted in an uncomfortable prostrate pose, and although he immediately appeared dead, Vurkan saw his chest rise and fall, and knew that he’d been knocked out and . . . hidden from view as well as could be.

In such a small space, this soldier knew it would have taken skill to disarm, dispatch and disrobe any man in so little time, regardless of how experienced in combat they were. Vurkan was intrigued, excited, but not in any way apprehensive. This fight, were there to be one, would be a challenge which he would relish. He slapped the guard hard on side of the head, which elicited a slow groan and fluttering eyelids, quickly followed by rolling, lolling pupils.

“Get up and get dressed, soldier! Your breakfast’s on the table!” Vurkan allowed his bizarre barrack-humour to work itself out on the victim whom had a nasty swelling on his shaved head. The soldier dreamily appraised his riser.
“Muungh? The slavin’ ship’s bin . . . dry-docked fur munthss . . .”
Still useless, he pulled the stricken man up and shoved him out the door and into the now sunlit courtyard area.
“What did he look like!? How tall? How fast!!? Come on maan!! Spit it out!”, Vurkan demanded harshly.
Unfortunately, both the effect of this inquisition, and the abrupt flash of consciousness beneath bright sunlight, made the guard vomit pitifully upon the grey ground, as he fell. He moaned and choked through this expulsion, only one word.

“Demon.”

“Demon the sword-swinger, or Demon as in Hell-bringer?” Vurkan demanded, persistent. Everyone knew the Demon in his squad. He was renowned throughout the city for his wickedness, and only received a commission because of his loyalty to his seargant..
“Both”, replied the guard, now kneeling with his hands buried in the soft, powdered silt.
Vurkan wasn’t amused. This fellow couldn't be of much use to him where time was precious. It would take him far too long to recover and answer pertinently, he decided. Leaning back, he swung the steel toe of his right boot into the teeth of the incompetent, feeling and hearing both the satisfying crunch of teeth and jaw-bone, and the squeamish squealing of a man now permanently disfigured.
“So. A demon whom looks like . . . Demon?”, he asked of no-one in particular. It would now be difficult to distinguish the intruder now that he had this guardsman’s leather breastplate and headscarf. Whoever this was, they could blend in . . . and do so with authority vested in the armour they surely now wore.

Beneath him, the victim of his brutality rolled moaning around in the ash, the blood running out from between his fingers, clamped hard over his mouth. Vurkan turned from him to face the north, where the bulk of the city lay, with its beautiful and inspiring towers, visible through the slowly-settling white haze, directly down the Streetway before him.

Tallest, and most elegant; the Seeker Tower saw.
The Seeker Tower knew.
The Seeker Tower Saw.

As a guardian of their paradise, it kept the House of Karn intact, over the bitter years of the Beginning. The Beginning, being the End.
“The End before the Beginning . . ?”
Vurkan cursed. He never could remember the holy wisdom of the texts his Mistress Karn wrote – that’s why he never got accepted into her Secret’s Hope, the elite of elite in her army’s rank - his ambition of ten years. As he cursed, he saw the Flag of Red, or Denial waving gently from out one of the myriad windows on its huge, golden pointed dome. Vurkan wondered if Vaaria’s mistress could really ‘see all and know all’ as the rumours would have him believe, and he was slightly unnerved at the coincidence. He’d never openly doubt it, but . . .

The Flag of Red waved again, then disappeared behind the glare of the sun, reflecting its gold on gold. This day would be long, he thought. His horse sniffed and raked at the ash beneath its hooves. Apparently it was impatient to have it over with, too, so the graying soldier clambered up and giddy'd up. The wake of dust and doom rose in a cloud behind him, casting a zephyrous shadow upon the Guard house wall. The guard kneeled a moaned again, sputtering incoherently as he did so.

Vurkan ignored him and kept moving. He didn’t get very far, however, when he stopped his mount abruptly and stared hard into the ash, now settled upon the Emigrant’s Streetway.
Someone had passed here recently. As recently as when the ash had settled, it seemed. They had stolen entry, borne upon the breath of Araakun itself. Vurkan felt the hackles. He was superstitious and felt things sometimes . . . sometimes bad things . . . before they happened. And since Araakun was the symbolic gateway to Vaarian Hell, (for all emigrants from the sanctuary Paradise Isle of Vaaria took this route in exile) he sensed unease that only comes from depthless introspections into soldier's souls.

Again, his eyes tracked towards the Seeker Tower, which urged a different flag. The flag of Caution. This was news. His seargent had raised the alarm, for sure . . . or had his mind just been read? The hackles continued, and he narrowed his eyes. He spoke quietly to himself, slowly.
"Don't think about it."

The soldier clucked his tongue. perturbed, and his horse moved forward slowly into a canter, with the ash kicking up into a pluming cloud behind them. Vurkan believed that Araakun had conspired against him and his Mistress, to help in the intrusion, if ever a mountain of fire could conspire . . . if ever a woman could rule a city with a grip of iron . . . and if ever there were one great mind within all minds of men. . .

Vurkan perceived the events as through the clouds of Araakun itself - too murky to conclude in this eventful morning. The trail of footprints lead off into the warehouse district. No point informing his seargent now. If his Mistress could read his mind, then let her know that he desired to pursue! He would catch this person, and take all the glory himself - so what? an Intruder is an Intruder, it is his duty to chase them down (if not his direct order), and of course - glory oft rides upon a soldier’s duty. He did not fear his seargent's wrath - he knew his seargent would make a similar choice, as he had been informed many times before. At any rate, the guardsman would report to the hospital block for treatment and a complaint, then (perhaps) relay the details of his incompetence. His seargent would ask, but pre-emptive action, (now that he had something to identify the intruder with) was now the only viable option to track the intruder down.

Vurkan smiled and sniffed the sulphurous air. The day would be long, but he was sure he'd find reward. Perhaps a promotion . . . or even a commendation! With this thought in mind, he spurred his mount into action and galloped down the narrow alleyway at speed, sinking down below the western industrial chimneys and into the gloom of the warehouse district.

The chase was on.

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