The first commitment
The mountain still smoked behind them when Vulhairi and Elizna came down from the clouds.
The dawn wind carried frost from the summit and heat from the dunes, a meeting of two tempers that felt like breath drawn before a cry.
Below, the small camp of his warband stirred—tents of canvas and bone, banners half-buried in the sand, men already awake though the sun had not yet broken.
Vulghere saw them first.
He froze, a ladle of water slipping from his hand.
Around him, talk died. Thirty soldiers, dust-caked and sunburnt, turned toward the descending shapes.
For a heartbeat none spoke, unsure whether what they saw was victory or omen.
Elizna landed lightly, gold feathers folding tight. Vulhairi followed, stumbling as his boots struck the ground. The men stepped back; even the horses shied.
"By the dunes," someone whispered, "he brought one of them down alive."
Vulghere pushed through the silence until he stood before his commander. "Alive, aye—but changed," he muttered, studying the branded hand. "What in all the wastes happened up there, Vul?"
Vulhairi looked at the mark. It still glowed faintly, pulsing with his heartbeat.
"The mountain spoke," he said. "And the Prophet listened."
That earned him uneasy laughter, the kind that hides fear.
One of the younger spearmen crossed himself. "We heard horns in the night. Thought the world was ending."
Elizna's gaze swept over them—curious, faintly amused.
"It was only beginning," she said, her words soft but clear enough for all to hear.
Vulghere stared. "It talks?"
"She," Vulhairi corrected, his tone calm but final. "And yes. She does."
The warband exchanged glances. Men who had fought beside him for years suddenly looked at him as if he'd stepped out of legend.
Vulghere broke the silence again. "You coming back to lead us, or to preach?"
Vulhairi smiled without warmth. "Both, if the Prophet wills it."
He turned toward the mountain's shadow, where banners were already gathering in the rising light. "He means to march soon. The Gnoll fires are closer than you think."
Vulghere spat into the sand. "Then the Light best learn to bleed like the rest of us."
Elizna's feathers rustled—a sound between warning and laughter.
Vulhairi's eyes met hers, and for a moment the camp seemed to hold its breath, caught between faith and fatigue.
Then the first horn sounded from the east, low and long, rolling over the dunes like thunder remembered.
The Circle of Command
The horn's echo had barely faded when a rider appeared from the east—robes streaked with dust, face veiled in white silk.
He dismounted before Vulhairi's fire and bowed so low the sand clung to his brow.
"Captain of the Seventh Line," he said, "the Prophet summons the circle. All commanders are to stand before dawn's light."
Vulghere grunted, "Summons, not invites. Already feels like church."
Vulhairi tightened the strap of his gauntlet. The brand on his palm throbbed faintly, warm as a heartbeat beneath the leather.
Elizna turned toward him, her feathers brushing the wind.
"Go," she murmured. "The flame calls its sparks."
The command tent stood in the center of the encampment—a vast canopy of gold and bone spears, heavy with heat and incense.
Inside, two dozen commanders gathered around a map carved into the sand: Uruk'herald to the east, the valley beyond, and far to the west the dull red scatter of gnoll fires.
At the far edge stood D'Moroath, the Prophet's emissary.
His robe was ash-grey, his eyes the pale blue of saltwater left too long under the sun. When he spoke, the tent's whispers fell away.
"Before the next moon, the Light moves west," D'Moroath said. "The Prophet's Chosen—those who stood upon the summit—will form the center host. The veteran commands will flank north and south."
He drew three lines through the sand with a rod of carved bone.
"Together, we will break the gnoll vanguard here."
A low murmur spread.
The word Chosen carried weight—it meant those who had seen the Prophet upon the mountain, those now marked by flame or faith.
Vulhairi felt the eyes of older elves settle on him: the ones with names like Falken, D'Rhael, D'Seron, Falkmar—not bloodlines, but titles earned through long years of service.
They wore their age as proof of worth, their titles as armor.
Among them, his own name felt raw, unfinished. Vul.
It wasn't a title, not even a house.
Every desert elf born after the Empire's fall carried it—a generational mark, a reminder of years spent rebuilding from sand and ruin.
To the veterans, Vul meant untested.
To Vulhairi, it meant alive.
A commander with gilded braids spoke, voice rough from wind and age.
"With respect, D'Moroath, the center is a graveyard. Why trust it to a boy of the new sands—and his winged companion?"
D'Moroath regarded him with a look that neither praised nor condemned.
"The Prophet trusts the new because the old have learned too well how to hesitate."
Vulhairi stepped forward. "The mountain didn't care when we were born. It only cared that we climbed."
The tent fell silent. Even the candles seemed to lean toward him.
D'Moroath nodded once.
"At sunrise, the Prophet himself will bless the banners. Come prepared to kneel."
As the commanders dispersed, Vulghere lingered beside him.
"Bless the banners," he muttered. "Sounds like he's naming the ones who'll burn first."
Vulhairi looked toward the west, where the gnoll fires still flickered.
"Then at least they'll burn with purpose," he said.
The Prophet's Blessing
Sleep never found him.
The night before the ceremony, the camp did not rest—it waited.
Armor was polished, banners stitched, blades re-oiled and laid beside prayer candles. Even the air held its breath.
Vulhairi sat apart from the others, a dull ache settling between his shoulders.
His warband was restless—men born to strike from shadow, not hold a line. Raiders, not saints.
They'd grown used to moving light, hitting hard, vanishing before dawn.
Now they were being told to march in formation, shoulder to shoulder with priests and prophets, into the open maw of war.
Vulghere had said little, but his silence was heavy. The others sharpened blades not for battle, but for comfort. Habit was safer than belief.
Elizna sat near the edge of the fire, wings folded like robes. Her eyes watched the horizon where the Prophet's pavilion burned like a second sunrise.
"You do not sleep," she said.
"I never did before a raid," he replied.
"This is not a raid," she murmured. "It is a crusade."
Vulhairi almost laughed. "We call it the same thing where I come from."
Before dawn, horns sounded—not the short, sharp blasts of desert war, but long, trembling notes that shivered through the bones.
The entire camp rose. Lines formed. The Chosen—those who had stood on the mountain—took the front ranks.
Behind them, the old veterans of the "D"-names formed their disciplined wings, banners high and still.
Vulhairi's men shuffled uneasily. "Feels wrong," one whispered. "Too clean."
"Don't think," Vulghere said. "Just move when I move."
They marched to the Prophet's field. Thousands knelt in concentric rings around a raised dais of stone and flame.
When the Prophet appeared, silence fell like sand through glass.
He wore no crown, no armor—only a cloak of orange linen that seemed to glow where the light touched it.
His eyes found the crowd, and the wind seemed to hush in respect.
"Children of the Dunes," he said, voice carrying with impossible calm. "Today we do not march to war—we march to remembrance. The Light reclaims its shadow."
Every head bowed. Every knee sank.
Vulhairi hesitated. His hand hovered at the hilt of his blade—not in defiance, but in reflex.
Then, slowly, he knelt.
The sand was cool beneath his knees, but the brand on his palm burned hotter than ever.
The Burning of the Banners
The Prophet raised his hand, and the desert answered.
From the ring of kneeling soldiers came the sound of flint on steel, thousands of sparks bursting into brief, hungry life.
Torches flared, their smoke curling into the still air, turning the sky above to brass.
Around the dais, priests stepped forward carrying long troughs of oil and clay braziers etched with symbols older than the Empire.
The smell was sharp—iron, ash, and incense.
One by one, the commanders advanced with their standards.
The Prophet touched each with a branch of burning reed, and the cloth caught in perfect silence.
Flames ran up the banners like veins of living gold.
The crowd watched, entranced. No one moved to smother the fire; no one screamed.
When the burning reached the sigils at the top, the Prophet lowered his hand.
The flames halted—frozen mid-consumption—hovering as if held by invisible breath.
"The Light does not destroy what it sanctifies," he said. "Its fire devours fear, not flesh. Its burn is memory."
The wind shifted, sending heat rolling across the front lines.
Vulhairi's throat tasted of copper.
He saw men trembling—not from pain, but from fervor.
Some whispered prayers, others laughed softly through tears.
His warband stayed silent, their eyes darting between him and the Prophet like wolves unsure of their leash.
Beside him, Vulghere muttered under his breath.
"Flames that stop halfway. That's not Light—it's trickery."
Vulhairi didn't answer.
Part of him agreed; part of him feared that if he spoke, the fire would hear.
The Prophet turned then, his gaze sweeping across the kneeling ranks.
"The old world burned without purpose," he said. "Now we give it meaning. When the banners burn, you will not see loss—you will see Light made visible."
He gestured toward the western horizon, where the faint glow of gnoll fires pulsed against the dunes.
"Out there waits the darkness that mocks us. Go and show it mercy. Go and teach it fire."
A murmur of assent spread through the crowd—deep, rhythmic, almost worshipful.
The commanders began to lower their burning standards, the flames bending but never dying.
When Vulhairi's turn came, he stepped forward and held his warband's banner aloft.
The Prophet's reed touched its edge; heat surged through the cloth and into Vulhairi's arm.
For an instant, he saw shapes in the flame—faces, perhaps memories, perhaps warning.
Elizna's voice reached him softly from behind.
"Fire remembers its maker."
The Prophet's eyes flicked toward him. Just for a heartbeat.
And in that gaze, Vulhairi felt it—the weight of something vast and hollow, demanding faith where fear should be.
When he lowered the banner, the cloth was untouched, yet the pole smoked faintly in his hands.
March of the Faithful
The banners still smoked when the horns sounded again.
Across the dunes, the army began to move—first a shuffle, then a rhythm, then a tide of feet and hooves grinding the sand to dust.
The Prophet's pavilion burned behind them like a sun refusing to set.
Vulhairi rode at the front of his warband. The branded hand rested on the reins, the faint heat pulsing with each heartbeat.
Elizna flew high above, a golden arc against the light, her shadow passing over them like a wing of memory.
No songs rose. Only the dry rasp of armor and the slow creak of leather.
By midday, the heat had grown savage. Vulghere rode up beside him, face drawn, eyes narrowed against the glare.
For a long while they said nothing. The dunes rolled around them—endless, indifferent.
At last Vulghere spoke.
"'Teach them fire,' he said."
He spat into the sand. "You ever heard a priest call killing teaching before?"
Vulhairi's gaze stayed on the horizon. "I've heard worse words for the same act."
Vulghere snorted. "Maybe. But I don't like how the men looked when the banners burned. Like they saw something they couldn't turn away from."
"They saw hope," Vulhairi said. "Or what they think hope looks like."
Vulghere glanced at him. "And you? What did you see?"
Vulhairi hesitated. The brand on his palm flared once, as if answering for him.
"Fire doesn't teach," he said finally. "It only shows what was already tinder."
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of oil and smoke from miles behind.
Vulghere nodded slowly. "Then maybe the Prophet's lesson is that everything burns, given time."
"Maybe."
Vulhairi's voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the shifting dunes. "Or maybe he means to prove it."
They rode on. Around them, the desert shimmered with heat, the horizon bending and reforming like glass.
In the distance, faint pillars of black smoke marked the gnoll frontier—thin and rising, as though the world itself was exhaling before the first strike.
Elizna dipped lower, circling once above them. Her voice drifted on the wind.
"The fire moves faster than wings."
Vulghere shaded his eyes to watch her. "If that's true," he muttered, "then we're already too late to outrun it."
Vulhairi said nothing. The Prophet's words still echoed behind his ribs, louder than the horns, sharper than the heat.
Go and teach it fire.
The dunes swallowed the sound of their march, but the wind carried the smoke forward—
as if eager to learn.