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Lan stood against the wall, panting slightly, taking advantage of a brief lull in the pursuit. It was not the running that was tiring him, nor the intermittent fights, when he had to turn and fight his pursuers. He could run all day and not even break into a sweat, and he had been trained in the use of the sword since the cradle. It wasn't the physical exertion that drained his energy, but the use of the Power, taken from the LifeSpring.
It is in everyone and every thing; it is the very stuff of the Universe. Those born with the ability can take the flows of life-energy that run through all things, and manipulate them towards their own ends; Weaving them into what is commonly known as magic. Those able to Weave the Flows are looked upon in two ways. Some believe them to be blessed by the Creator beyond description, given a wondrous gift. Others believe that the Power is the source of all evil, because of the evil things that have been done with it throughout the history of the world.
It was the use of this Power that was wearing Lan down - the constant battle not to give in to the euphoria that came from tapping the LifeSpring. There were times when the enemy he faced required more than brute strength or skill with a blade. He faced creatures of Shadow, untouchable by a mere sword, no matter how sharp or masterfully wielded. Weaving the Flows sapped his strength as surely as walking all day in the burning sun of the Jangai Desert would drain the energy of a normal man.
Lan himself had done that many times in his constant battle against the evil that was encroaching upon his homeland; it had already taken his family from him. He had been left alone in the world, at the tender age of fifteen. At that time he was already a near master of both armed and unarmed combat, and strong in the use of the Power. He was perhaps the strongest in the Power born in centuries. So he took the battle to the Darkness, and his until-then untested skills had been honed to deadliness in the hard years that followed.
It had come from the South, from the Twisted Lands. An ancient evil, the counter-balance to the Creator, it came northwards devouring land after land; destroying them completely, or else turning them to the Darkness. Its hideous minions came howling out of the South, burning all before them. Entire cities had gone into the cooking pots of the inhuman allies of those wretched peoples that had surrendered to the evil. Taking it into their hearts, they became the evil. The Darkness had destroyed every land and nation that stood in its path, until the remaining lands rallied, and began a desperate counter-offensive. Then the Shadow's horrifying advance had come to a grinding halt, and centuries of bitter warfare ensued, with neither mercy, truce nor quarter granted on either side. Several times the Shadow upon the land had been pushed back southwards, and each time it had come screaming back to increase its hold on the land. That lost land warped and changed, becoming the Twisted Lands; the Lands of Shadow and Darkness. Reality itself was different in those places. It was here that the twisted creatures of the Shadow were created; reality could be bent to suit the unholy purposes of the Darkness.
Lan's homeland of Endoria now stood upon the Darkborder along with Astir and Tarafael. Already the southern-most districts had been consumed, and Lan had been forced to watch the land he grew up in twisted and destroyed. Lan had taken to venturing far into the Twisted Lands, in pursuit of a vengeance that could never be assuaged. The remaining Freelands - twelve now after the loss of Narishma to the Shadow - also struggled to keep the Darkness at bay, though for less personal reasons. There were vicious skirmishes every day up and down the Darkborder, and often there were pitched battles. Less frequently came the manoeuvring of huge armies, when the carrion birds gorged themselves for many days after.
The hatred ran deep on both sides. Those in the Freelands hated the Shadow for the death and pain it had caused over the endless years of war. Those in service to the Shadow hated anyone who was pure and whole, hated them because they reminded those twisted, lost souls of what they had lost.
After many years of unending war, Lan was here in the dank, mouldering corridors of an ancient city, long buried beneath the earth in some terrible cataclysm. The city was now home to a malignant force; he could feel the brooding menace of it in the very walls. And it was searching for him, throwing all of its terrible might and twisted minions into the effort of finding him.
The reason for this was clutched tightly to his breast. A small figurine, barely a handspan tall; a figurine throbbing with evil power. He could feel that force trying to enter his mind. Icy fingers that burned like fire stabbed into his brain, searching for a chink to squeeze into, seeking to take over. It was a constant struggle not to lose himself to its insidious crooning. He had had no time to study the figurine but the fact that it had been heavily guarded and fanatically defended was reason enough for him to take it. He was worried about what an object of such obvious and tangible power was doing here in this long-forgotten city, now undoubtedly the lair of one of the Darkness' great Captains. There were many levels of what the ignorant called Hell. The Shadow came from one of them. The possibility of an alliance between the Shadow and some nameless power from another dark reality was a terrifying prospect. Lan knew the feel of the twisting, corrupt taint of the Shadow, but where the Shadow was a perversion of the Power of the LifeSpring, this icon was completely alien even to the Shadow.
The Shadow that had taken his family and was threatening to take his homeland. He felt his rage growing, twisting out from that red-hot kernel of hate and anguish that was constantly within him. He wanted to burn this city of Shadow out of the ground, destroy it in an apocalyptic cataclysm tenfold more destructive than whatever had broken this once-great city so long ago. The fires of rage roared in his mind's eye, spider-webbed with the black lightning of hate and despair, and Lan gathered into himself and readied the Flows that would unleash destruction upon this dead city and its unholy denizens. And upon himself, for no mortal, no matter how powerful, could hope to Weave Power of that magnitude and not be consumed.
Somehow, this thought came through the waves of all-consuming fury that threatened to swamp the island that was Lan's sanity. Teetering on the very brink of madness and self-destruction, Lan wrenched his thoughts away from visions of cataclysm and began the agonisingly slow return to himself. Even in the cloud of mental fog that gripped his mind, Lan was sure it was the figurine that had precipitated his descent into madness. He could still feel the lingering taint in his mind. It left him feeling dirty and defiled. But that echo of its presence gave Lan an insight into the statue's nature. He could now see it for what it was; a vessel for an agent of Chaos.
Lan was now certain it had been this entity that was responsible for the destruction of this city, whether though an attempt by some ancient race to destroy the demon, or simply for the demigod's own perverted pleasure. Such an act was typical of the denizens of the Chaos reality, who revelled in pain and death. Lan wondered if the Shadow completely understood the possible consequences of an alliance with the Chaos Realm, and just who was using whom.
A sound interrupted his musings. It was only a slight scrape of something against the flagstones, with an echoing quality that said it came from a distance, but it was a sound where there should have been none. Then he felt it. A presence that polluted the LifeSpring itself with its unnatural essence. His stomach churned and his head spun as the Flows around him whipped and writhed, as though trying to escape the loathsome touch of this anti-life. For him to sense it this strongly it must be a beast of enormous power. It must have felt the disruption to the LifeFlow caused by his near-brush with self-annihilation. He considered flight - he was no coward, but he couldn't risk the Shadow regaining the statuette. However, the residue of the Power he had come so close to unleashing would remain with him for some time, and could be used to track him. Which left fighting.
He wasn't afraid of death. It came for all men, at the time of its choosing, and Lan had never been one to believe that Death could be cheated. But what he had discovered here was too important to die with him.
And so clearing his mind of thought and feeling, Lan readied himself for combat. He had done this so many times that it came without thought. His breathing slowed, along with his pulse, and his senses heightened with the rush of adrenaline that always came in the prelude to battle. He could feel every molecule of his sword as if it were part of his own body, and the whole world around him seemed to beat in time with his heart. Wrapped in this blanket of life, his emotions seemed distant, as though they belonged to someone else. There was no fear, regret or excitement, only echoed reflections of another person's feelings.
The creature was closer now, and in that void of unfeeling Lan took hold of the LifeFlows, and again without thought, Wove them into light. An orb of brilliant radiation flared into being above his head. In the shadows beyond the Power-created light's field of illumination, two small patches of darkness, somehow blacker even than the pitch-dark surrounding them, floated towards him. A few moments later, they were revealed as the eyes of a creature of Shadow and Darkness, anti-light given terrifying shape. Somewhere, someone felt mind-wrenching terror as the beast continued its advance. Just the reflected images of those feelings were almost enough to drive Lan to his knees, even in the void that surrounded thought.
It was one of the Unbeing, entities of anti-life that kill by simply coming into contact with the living. Their stuff of unlife is so opposite and incompatible to that of all other planes and dimensions that it causes anything it comes into contact with to cease existing, as though it had never existed. And this was one of the most powerful among them, a Lord of Unbeing. Twelve feet tall, its powerful wings brushed the sides of a corridor where five men could walk abreast. It was hard to make out its features; there were only impressions of impressions that suggested. Light that touched the creature was absorbed, although no amount of light could ever fill that darkness, and it was only possible to see where it was because you could see where it wasn't.
Again, that other person felt terror; less than before, but enough to destroy the mind of a lesser person than Lan al'Dragor d'Edorian. As it was, Lan barely felt it; the fear scrabbled desperately at the outside of the void, unable to find a way in.
Just as suddenly, all trace of fear was gone, leaving behind only a deep sense of calm that saturated even the void. In the certain knowledge that whatever the future held, he was fit for at least this one fight, Lan Wove the Flows and leapt into combat, and his soul sang with the fierce joy of battle.